


Scintilla

by The_Readers_Muse



Series: The one where Milton didn't die and is banging Jesus [1]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU where Milton and Andrea escape Woodsbury but Andrea dies and Milton never makes it to the prison, Adult Content, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Prostate Milking, References to Depression, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Survivor Guilt, Wilderness Survival, but also canon compliant safe for the fact that Milton is alive here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:25:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t who he was. </p><p>But it could be. </p><p>If he let it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: For imorca because she tagged me on tumblr and literally just said: “Milton x Jesus, tho” and here we are because I am an entire trash can, apparently. Set in an AU where Milton escaped Woodsbury with Andrea in season three instead of staying, but lost Andrea before they could get to the prison and ended up on his own in the wild. Everything basically follows canon, but Milton is on his own until around the time when Team Family discovers Alexandria where in fix his comes across Jesus.
> 
> Disclaimer: Grief/loss/healing, depression, adult language, canon appropriate violence, blood and gore, sexual content.

The first life he'd taken had been hers.

There had been a storm.

His glasses had fogged up.

He hadn't seen the walkers until she was shoving him to the side with a strangled sound.

He got the rest in pieces between lightning strikes.

The sheen of bloody, rotting teeth through the bubbles of rain trickling down the lens.

The opaque mist of dead eyes as the horde ripped into her.

Scrambling backwards as his arms sank wrist deep in the running mud.

Falling down the embankment.

Hitting his head on a rotting stump.

Then nothing.

It had been an accident.

But that hadn't made it any less damning.

After that - turned around in the grey, chased by walkers, lost, alone - he'd just wandered.

* * *

 

He avoided them at first, staying on the outskirts of the forest and preserving his ammunition. Moving from house to house when he could. Waiting for the walkers to pass before he moved on. Stopping and stalling as everything came down to those handful of moments where he could move freely.

Most of the houses were stripped bare. No food. No usable supplies. No clothing. Nothing. But he found bits and pieces he could use as the days trickled past. A long black canvas trench coat in the back of a closet with the tags still on. A camping machete underneath the flannel of an abandoned sleeping bag rolled out by a grouping of candles in a sour smelling living room. A half-used roll of duct tape. Rope. Paper.

He killed his first walker without bullets five days after he lost Andrea. Stabbing it awkwardly through the temple as it shambled aimlessly down the hall of the last home for at least ten miles in either direction. Taking it down before it could alert the small group milling outside. The kill itself was messy. Undignified. He misjudged his trajectory and speed so that instead of pinning the walker cleanly to the wall with his weight, they struggled for an ageless second before falling over a side table and across an expensive looking carpet. Spraying his skin with a mist of foul, lukewarm red when he wrenched the knife free just a bit too quickly. Recoiling as every cell in his body curled into itself in disgust.

He was unused to the concept of vomiting quietly, but he adapted.

He found three empty cans of dog food and a dirty spoon on the counter of the breakfast nook in the same house. He tried to think about another explanation – another reason why the spoon was coated in the same air-dried brown as the inside of the kibble cans. But when he looked around at the empty cupboards around him, he knew his first assumption was probably the correct one.

He thought about that for a long time afterwards.

* * *

 

He stopped sleeping for the most part. Other than the constant pit of hunger burrowing a hole in his belly, that was what got to him first. He couldn't. He didn't feel safe. Even indoors, behind a stranger's door and furniture dragged in front of them for good measure, he still felt open - vulnerable.

Even when his eyes were closed, all he was really doing was watching the inside of his lids.

Slowly realizing why Andrea had been so desperate to make Woodsbury work.

Why she'd told him that places like that – even the prison – were something special.

_Something worth fighting for._

He spent part of his day observing, scribbling down thoughts and observations when he could in his notebooks. About walkers. About the supplies he needed. About how long he had before winter. Everything. Trying to exorcise the itch twitching out underneath his skin that reminded him it had been almost a month since he'd seen another living person.

* * *

 

He gave into temptation and said his name out loud in front of a small fire in the half-dark of someone's back lawn one night. Heating up some water he'd collected from a nearby creek in a six-pack of empty beer cans as a full moon rose thick and full at his back.

They were the first words he'd said in over two months. But he still cringed when they aired out, over-loud and scratchy with disuse as somewhere in the close distance, a pack of coyotes yipped and howled. It sounded ridiculous, but he wanted to make sure he still remembered how. Irrationally afraid that he was slowly losing parts of himself to the silence.

He used to like the silence.

He used to go out of his way to avoid people.

He used to do a lot of things.

* * *

* * *

 

He woke up one night to the chill of a knife pressed against his throat and the weight of a filthy hand – tangy with disturbed earth and fire-ash - against his mouth. He struggled into the sting of smoke from his extinguished fire, catching three, maybe four shadowy shapes moving around the small clearing he'd settled in for the night before a boot slammed into his ribs so hard he felt the bones creak.

Every bit of air exploded out of him in a rush as he gagged and flailed. Jamming the sharp of his elbows into the person's chest again and again until they fell away and all the pressure on his skin disappeared. By the time he had picked himself up and blew on the coals enough to bath the pre-dawn in an orangey-red glow, they'd taken everything he had.

Everything except his heartbeat.

* * *

 

The next day, he was digging through a pile of trash when the sound of gunshots pealed out into the foggy afternoon air. There was a moment of hesitation before he started moving – a moment to question if he wanted to try. Weighing the pros and the cons until the flashing neon of his own morality overrode logic and made the rest easy.

He fashioned a crude spear with a fire-blackened tip out of a fallen branch and followed them. But he wasn't kidding himself. It was desperation and a complete lack of options that was making him brave. It was all about averages. If he didn't get his supplies back, he was going to die before he reached the next town. Going after them was the only choice he had left.

* * *

 

It was the screams that helped him pinpoint the location. High on an unfamiliar building sort of rage that almost extinguished itself when he pushed hap-hazard through the trees and almost right into a trio of walkers clustered around the owner of said screams.

He picked up his machete from where it'd been left abandoned on the ground slowly. Careful not to make a sound as he repatriated the weapon and hefted its weight like the return of an old friend. He wanted to leave the same way – undetected – taking in the situation pragmatically as he crouched down, spear-butt braced on the ground beside him so he could lever himself up at a moment's notice. Concentrating on inching his stolen bedroll fractionally closer as the walkers continued their meal.

But what he wasn't counting on was whoever it was seeing him from inside that tangle of boney limbs and thick, coating blood.

"Please..." she begged, heavy on the consonants. A stressed note. Fractured and almost childishly high. Reaching out to him from between rotten flesh and worn fabric as her broken nails caught on the wisps and tore into hang-nail shreds.

She'd been part of the group who had stolen from him. Young. Brunette. Mid-range height and weight with deep dimples and blood-shot eyes. She was even wearing one his shirts. He had her red-handed, settled in the debris of an overnight camp that was littered with the fruits of his labor. His fire starter leaning against a rock beside the empty fire pit. The cans of food he'd been painstakingly rationing were empty and charred in the ashes. Everything he'd built up for months, _gone_.

He got his feet back underneath him slowly. Scaring himself motionless when a part of him actually considered the thought of just walking away. Eyes feeling far too wide for his face when he realized how easy it would be. How no one would blame him. How no one would know. How she deserved it. How he was so hungry he could-

He caught the first walker through the back of its head with his spear. Grunting through the brute force of it as his muscles responded in kind. Learned behavior. Muscle memory. The moments still weren't fluid – natural - but they came easier now. He let the body fall backwards, its dead weight snapping the branch firmly in half as the others turned, snarling. Letting pieces of her drop from their hands as they turned, reaching for him.

This time he didn't flinch when blood splattered across his face. Letting it whip out in uneven flings of arterial splatter as the skull of the second concaved under the edge of his blade. Whirling out, half-panicked as he caught the shadows in the corner of his eye, beheading the last one with a painful wrench of his back.

The sudden silence was uncanny. Leaving him stunned and unsteady on his feet as the woman writhed in the absence of stimuli – both good and bad – blood welling up in the hollow of her ruined chest.

He swallowed the tang of frustrated anger. So tired and hungry he could have killed for it as he forced himself to fold down beside her. Dutifully penitent to a sin he'd only really thought about committing as the tips of her fingers ghosted across the knob of his knee.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, shuddering. A well of red pooling in the cavity where skin was supposed to be, upsetting itself every other breath to stream thin down her sides. "I'm so sorry. I was just so hungry and-"

A muscle in his cheek twitched, trying to avoid eye-contact as every cell of skin she touched made him burn hot on the inside. Fighting with the churn in his stomach that reminded him how easy it would be to become the type of person who would have just walked away.

_It wasn't who he was._

_But it could be._

_If he let it._

"Stop."

That was all he said. All he could say as he knelt there, a mess of clenched teeth and chewing on the inside of his cheek as he wrestled with the unfamiliar burn of misplaced aggression. Coming down in cycles as he shifted in discomfort. Wanting to move - to leave - but her eyes had him captive. Because she didn't stop talking and for some reason he forgot about the line in the sand he was trying to draw between them.

She couldn't have been older than twenty years old.

"The others, they have your pack, your gun," she panted, filthy hands spidering out, skimming through the dew-slick grass as the outside of her teeth stained red with welling blood.

"We could have shared," he started, wanting to be harsh the same time as his mind raced. Having to stop himself from reaching out half a dozen times in under a minute to try and help. To smooth the scraps of his stolen shirt down over the hole in her belly. To cover the underwire of her bra that was peeking through like something wrong and forbidden. The sweat-yellow material almost overshadowed by the disconcerting flirtation of her ribs as they emerged – porcelain-sheened - out of the mess of blood and bone every time she inhaled.

She shook her head.

"Don't be stupid."

There was no heat to the words.

She was past that.

But he got the message all the same.

_You didn't trust._

_You couldn't afford to._

_Not anymore._

"You haven't be out here long have you?" she rasped after a moment, brown curls limp-wild and unwashed as they flared out in a messy halo around her head. "You had somewhere, didn't you? I can tell. You're still shiny. _Whole._ Not like us."

"I saw you practicing with that machete. Before it got dark. You're putting too much weight into the thrust. Unless the blade isn't sharp you don't need to. Let it- let it do the work. All it needs is gravity. My dad taught me that before, before-"

He made a mental note to locate a blade sharpener. Reminding himself that pragmatism was essential to any and all survival situations as his fingers itched for the phantom curl of his pen between his fingers. They'd even taken his notebooks. All his observations. His records.

"Want some advice?" she murmured, struggling now as her hand ranged back to clutch at the curve of his knee. Wincing internally as hurt reflected in her eyes when he recoiled. Feeling responsible for that expression in a way he didn't quite understand as he bit down on an apology by the skin of his teeth. Knowing at its heart it would be disingenuous.

_He didn't want her advice._

_He didn't-_

"Don't be out here too long," she wheezed throatily. Crimson bubbles trickle-trailing from the corner of her lips as her chest convulsed. Shuddering. "Being out here? It strips you. You don't think it will. You tell yourself you won't let it, but- eventually-"

He opened his mouth to say something, but she was still talking.

Using that last bit of life in her to-

"There are worse things than th-them. I learned that the hard way and that's why I'm here," she rasped, tears trickling down familiar salt-lined tracks as his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Memories have teeth."

The woman's eyes were still human and pleading when he ended it.

* * *

 

Two days after that he found a walker wearing his coat and pack.

From there on the rest was easy.

He counted the shell casings back to his abandoned gun. Loading it with the last two bullets he'd kept in his pocket as spares and slipped it back in his holster. He stripped the walker's corpse of his things and slipped them back on. Internally marveling on how mute that little voice in the back of his head had become as he took a moment to slice the walker's jeans from its hips. Cutting the thick denim into strips for later as he entertained the idea of spending the night curled over his coat with a needle and thread. Sewing the jean-denim to the most vulnerable areas and layering the rest with the last of the duck-tape.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to start over.

Maybe.

* * *

 

He forgot how to sleep for a while afterwards when he sat down to record what had happened in his notebook and realized he hadn't even asked the woman's name.

* * *

 

The days passed slower after that.

But also faster.

He lost track of what month it was.

How long he'd been out here.

He forgot how to care.

* * *

 

He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror sometime later.

Shattering it reflexively with his fist before he realized what he was looking at.

 _Who_.

It wasn't another person.

It wasn't a walker.

_It was him._

He picked up one of the shards, heart racing. Trying to find himself in the wild tangle of shaggy hair, straw-brown stubble, dried blood and dirt. He stared at his reflection for a long time. Taking in the hollows punched deep under tired eyes and the dark, shadowing sort of gauntness that comes part and parcel when a person used to plenty is forced to survive on less – much less. But even then, he still couldn't recognize himself.

He was careful not to look at his reflection much after that.


	2. Chapter 2

He was only vaguely aware that at some point he'd passed the state-line out of Georgia. Maybe even two. Not this it mattered. He was following a trail of decay. Rooting for scraps that even other survivors had thrown away as the seasons changed and the air grew colder.

But it wasn't until the truck he'd managed to get started a few days back finally ran out of gas - coasting him as far as the sign that welcomed people to the city limits of Washington, DC - that the reality of it really hit home.

_He was somewhere bordering Virginia and Maryland._

_He'd criss-crossed through a state and then some._

_Jesus._

He sat there for a while, beside a burned out visitor's center and a graveyard of abandoned cars. Listening to the _putt-putt-puttering_ of the engine finally giving up the goat as a group of walkers, around half a dozen strong, started trickling in from all sides. Stumbling through the blowing trash as exhaustion rippled over him like a familiar skin.

He leaned back in the seat with a sigh. Fingers scritch-scratching idly through the stubble on his chin. Able to see the very tip-tops of distant sky-scrapers wavering distantly in the summer haze as he let the heat sink through his layers. Lulled by it as a handful of walkers milled in front of the blown out windows of the building beside him. Drawn by the noise as the walkers closest snarled loud into the exaggerated quiet.

He didn't look.

Worse, he didn't even move.

He just stared out the cracked windshield into the sky-line and tried to remember the last time he'd had a moment to just look. To think about something beyond the wreckage. Something other than how he didn't sleep more than three hours at a time anymore. How he just wanted everything to stop.

He closed his eyes. Feeling the sting of salt building behind them.

Expelling stale air into the dusty-closeness as the walkers shuffled closer…. _closer_.

If he stayed like this it was blue skies for as far as he could see.

* * *

He waited until the last possible moment before grabbing his pack and slipping through a gap in the growing herd. Swinging it securely onto his back as he cut down those nearest with his machete. Wishing, more than anything, that someday he'd be brave enough to keep his eyes closed.

_To let it be over._

* * *

Not long after, he was teaching himself how to collect rainwater in plastic bags tied to the low branches of a pine when a small group – a family of five – crossed through the green not twenty meters away.

He was belly down in the moss before he'd even thought the action through. Grabbing his pack and supplies as quietly as he could as he watched them look around. Pointing at a hollowed concave in the terrain almost directly opposite his camp as he hissed out a breath. Already resigned to leaving the plastic bags behind as he tried to figure out how to leave without being spotted.

But it was the low, warbling cry of a newborn that made him stiffen in place.

That made him revaluate and understand.

They weren't here for him.

In fact, while part of him didn't think it was possible, by all accounts they had bigger problems.

"We need to stop," one of them piped up, supporting an exhausted looking woman who was already half stumbling. Carrying a squalling bundle wrapped in a blanket as a newborn's hungry cries rushed out to fill the intervening space. "She shouldn't be out of bed, let alone running. Not after-"

He pushed his glasses further up his nose with his thumb and forefinger, automatically trying to piece their story together as he squinted through the foliage. Straining to hear what was being said as one of them passed the woman a canteen. She drained it with an assenting nod. Shaking the drops from the rim as his own parched throat ached in sympathy.

"You know we didn't have any choice," another replied, older, male. Perhaps the leader as his voice wafted up from a mess of overgrown, dirty blond hair with nothing but a bloody piece of pipe for a weapon. "We can stay here tonight, try our luck in town in the morning for supplies. But no noise, those walker kills were fresh. Whoever did that might still be around here somewhere and I don't want a confrontation when we just have the clothes on our backs, understand?"

He slipped away sometime in the interim. Leaving a grocery basket of what he could spare along with a note about a medical supply store with a child care section he hadn't had any need to raid on the outskirts of their camp before dawn filtered through.

He could have stayed.

They could have helped each other.

But after what had happened – _after Phillip_ \- he didn't trust people anymore.

He cared.

But he didn't trust.

_He couldn't._

* * *

At one point he passed a sign advertising a new housing development.

Affluent.

Self-sustainable.

_Alexandria._

He headed towards it without giving it much thought. Wondering how picked over it would be. Or if it had anything to offer at all considering it seemed to be a development that had still been in construction when things ended. Thinking it might be a decent place to hole up overnight at the very least as his worn soles _scrape-scraped_ across the trash-strewn blacktop.

The wall, however, brought him up short.

He paused, wavering in place as the sound of laughter filtered through the reinforced metal slates. He inhaled, smelling- food. Real food. _Cooked food_ as he blinked into the idealism of it all. It didn't seem real. He swallowed, then swallowed again when the smell of- _god, was that pasta?_ – wafted through the stillness. Mouth thick with saliva as he wavered closer, tempted.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

He hadn't eaten in days.

He actually thought about it.

Standing just off to the side of those big metal gates.

He thought about walking up and knocking.

About staying.

_Settling._

About trying to live again.

His fist tightened around the strap of his pack as he peered through a thin gap in the metal.

Absorbing it in fractions as he tried not to hyperventilate into the rusting edges.

There was a blonde woman talking to a brown haired kid, leggy, almost a teenager.

A boy with dirty blonde hair playing with a boat on a small inlet pond.

A tall man with construction gloves talking animatedly to an older man with greying hair.

Two men curled up together on their back porch, kissing long and slow.

He jerked himself away when a voice sounded, female and authorative.

"Spencer, have Aiden and Nicholas reported back yet?"

He thought about it.

About what it would be like to sleep in a real bed.

Eat real food and sleep behind strong walls.

But Woodsbury had left a bitterness in his mouth that refused to fade.

And ultimately, he didn't have it in him to try.

Not yet.

He kept walking.

* * *

 Weeks passed like that.


	3. Chapter 3

He was warming his hands over the embers of his morning fire when a sudden rustling in the bushes to his right made him flinch. Sending him diving for his machete as his free hand fumbled with his gun. Leveling them up the same moment a man stepped slowly out of the brush. Hands raised and empty in the universal sign of peace – or maybe just surrender – that everyone, no matter where they were from, understood clear as day.

For a long moment, he just stared. _They both did_. Sizing each other up in a way that screamed predator to prey but with neither of them willing to admit which was which. Refusing to cave to the curdling fear rising quick under his skin. Sinking conflicted feelings right through the very heart of him. Vicious, like a knife-stab in the gut, the same time as he forced himself to swallow hard and rise to his full height.

_Whatever happened, happened._

_But he was past the point where he was going to just let it._

_He was too dead to be afraid anymore._

He made sure that the man could see it as he stared right back.

Every inch of him ready to fight his way out of this if he made him.

But blue eyes met their equal when the stranger absorbed the sting and shifted in place, looking him up and down – curious.

It was out of character, but his lip curled up in a silent snarl all the same. A warning muted by the rush of the creek at his back and the dark tangle in the center of his chest where by all known measure, his heart was still supposed to be. But he didn't feel it. He didn't even feel the anger or aggression the act should have come along with. He existed somewhere above it. Floating. Unaffected.

He felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

But it was around that point that he realized the man's expression had changed. It was still cautious and half-closed. Only now there was more of an upward lilt to the stranger's lips than he figured had any right being there. Like he'd done his weighing and measuring and was now simply enjoying the view.

_Hell, it was almost a smile._

He didn't return it.

Because honestly, all he could really process after taking in the man's long brown hair and flaring trench was how _clean_ he looked. How he couldn't even smell the sour-stale of unwashed clothes or sweat. He was pristine. A stark comparison to the disgusting layer of dirt and gore that was still smeared across his skin from his run in with a large herd a few days earlier.

He'd tried to go around it, but the herd was too wide. Spaced just far enough apart that on foot, even going around it, one wrong move and it would be all over. So he'd taken a chance. He'd taken down a walker quietly and ripped it open. Disguising himself with their scent so he could pass through undetected. Just like Andrea had taught him when they'd been out together in the woods – before all this. She'd told him everything. About the quarry and Atlanta, how two of their group had taken a chance and ended up getting them out of the city just before the walkers had-

"Hello," the man opened, because he supposed that in the end, someone had to.

It should have been awkward. Maybe it was. But from his perspective the man was a single unending line with a big fat question mark attached. And out here, questions – strangers – people – were dangerous. The only thing that niggled doubt was that the expression and the tone didn't quite match someone that wished him harm. Rather, he looked almost genuinely friendly.

Which only made his lack of reply all the more pointed.

"Sorry if I startled you," the man continued, gesturing up at the gun that was still pointed at him with a gentle crook of his fingers. "There's no need, I'm a friend."

_A friend?_

He'd had friends once.

They were all gone now.

_Andrea._

_Phillip._

All of them.

Every single one was-

"Do you even have bullets in that thing?"

_He didn't._

"If you make it necessary for me to pull the trigger you will surely find out," he said instead, coolly hard as he broke his silence with barely a beat in the moment's natural rhythm. Patently ignoring the stress-line fractures that carried the words. Voice hoarse and unsteady from months of disuse.

"Fair enough," the man remarked easily, head cocking almost playfully off the side. Almost like he'd said something amusing as the forest breathed – expanding and contracting around them.

"What do you want?" he asked bluntly, discomfort trickling in as he kept the gun up – unwavering. He was a decent shot now. He could have been better, but his bullets had been limited from the start, even more so after that run in a few months back. He'd found a few boxes here and there, mostly empty. He'd told himself he'd always keep one as a spare. Not for the walkers. But just in case, only-

The man's lips quirked upwards again. Confusing him. He'd never been good with social cues, but even he could see this wasn't a situation that fit that kind of smile.

"A little company maybe?"

He stiffened, ready to say something in reply before the man's hands went back up to where they'd started. _Placating._

"A minute to warm up? If you have some clean water, then I have food to share," the man offered, gesturing at the pack on his back as his heart beat finally started to slow. Hackles sinking slowly down before he finally nodded. Lowering his gun in increments as the man shrugged out of his pack and tossed it over for him to inspect. There were no weapons. Just a couple days' worth of supplies, some rope a can opener and an empty water bottle.

This was familiar.

Negotiated.

_Fair._

A social contract with a clear beginning and end point.

He nodded again, returning the man's bag with a gentle toss. Indicating that he could approach as he slowly holstered his Glock. He kept his machete beside him as a precaution even as the man smiled again, rubbing his hands together as their breath rose in twinned plumes of misty-white in the cool morning air.

Still, given the situation, he had to admit it'd still surprised him when the man settled himself opposite around the fire and opened his pack. Willingly breaking bread with a stranger with no real weapon in sight.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened.

* * *

"What's your name?" the man asked as he handed him a tin of fruit with a pull-tab. The kind Phillip's wife used to pack in Penny's lunches before all this. Fruit cocktail. All natural sugars. He peeled the top off after a quick scan for any tampering, using his fingers to scoop out the sweet fruit. Doing his best to ignore his audience as his empty stomach burbled with eager-discontent at the hold up when he forced himself to go slow.

"My friends used to call me Jesus," the man offered, hands out like a parody of the crucifixion. Cheeks bulging with a mouthful of bread – fresh and smelling like every instance of home he'd never really understood the meaning of until that very moment.

"I'm not your friend," he pointed out, knuckling his dirty glasses back up his nose, the ghost of old neuroses rearing their head. Blunt truth melded together with a general misunderstanding of most social cues and an inherent awkwardness he'd never quite grown out of.

"No," the man agreed, scratching at his hat for a moment before he offering him a piece. Stretching over the glowing coals so he could take it with a minimum of effort. "But I'm open to giving it a shot. Are you?"

He raised a brow, accepting the chunk carefully. Finding it a strange choice of words given the situation as his free hand ghosted over his holstered sidearm like foreshadowing.

"Only if provoked," he deadpanned, adjusting his glasses.

It came out sarcastic.

And it took a moment to realize he'd meant it that way.

_Fascinating._

He hadn't felt anything close to that in-

But his moment of introspection was shattered when the man laughed.

Full-bodied and honest.

"You have a pretty dry sense of humor for someone who's covered in blood," the man hummed, pleasant and easy in a way that immediately sent up warning flags in the back of his mind. "Though, I'm starting to get the impression that might just be you. It is you, isn't it?"

He frowned, feeling the dried blood and gore crack and shift across his face as the expression settled in to stay. Uncertain of how they'd gotten from where they started to where they were now as the man's humor threatened to be contagious. Honestly he wouldn't have known. Humor was so specific, branded and fashioned in a way that often curtailed it to the country of origin, culture, race, gender, creed, sexual orientation, etcetera that most of the intricacies of popularized humor had largely escaped him.

"That's great, just when you think everything good is dead, laughter – real laughter - sneaks up and surprises you in the weirdest of places, huh?" the man chuckled, more to himself than anything. Tucking a bit of hair behind his ear as he offered him another chunk of bread.

He took it mutely. Cycling through an unsteady reel of moments as he remembered being out in the field with Merle, smiling as the man had smirked and sung his duct-taped jacket praises the whole way back to town. Those quiet moments with Andrea, playing cards and getting beaten at crib every time, hyper-aware of her indulgent smile that only grew warmer by the day. Even that moment with Hershel – the man from the prison with his leg amputated just below the knee. Remembering that wide smile and slow building humor he hadn't been able to help but return despite the tension between their groups.

It seemed like years ago.

_Decades._

"How about until we get there you can call me Paul. Paul Rovia," the man – Paul, apparently – offered, smiling again. Small and humble just like the origins of the name itself as a first remembered bit of Bible Belt trivia rattled through his mind's eye. "And yours? What can I call you?"

His hesitation was animal. Cautious and real before he took a chance and allowed himself the indulgence. Wondering half-heartedly if there was really power in saying one's name out loud. And that if there was, if he could tap into it somehow and be strong enough to end this before either Paul or the world in general disappointed him.

"Milton. My name is Milton Mamet."


	4. Chapter 4

"I've been looking for you, you know," Paul remarked after they'd finished the last of the bread and he was heating up more drinking water to fill their canteens. Fulfilling the requirements of his side of the bargain. "Nothing bad I promise. So you can relax. And stop with that look- I get how it sounds. But I have my reasons."

His hand curled around the handle of the collapsible pot. Mentally calculating the temperature of the water and the distance between him and the stranger. Reasonably confident that if necessary he could hurl it across the fire, grab his things and be long gone before the man was in any condition to chase after.

"It's just, I know a lot of people. And where I'm from we're friendly with a few other groups – survivors - and some have put out feelers. Wanting to know if it was one of us that helped them out. Right when they needed it, apparently," Paul explained, watching him. Adding weight to each word despite the light tone he managed to maintain throughout.

He felt the strain under his skin as he fought to keep his face expressionless.

"There was a woman not long ago that got taken in by some friends of mine. She told me about being out on her own. Starving. Sick. She woke up one morning to a grocery bag of medication and food. Enough to get her through the next few days – curbing the fever," the man shared, peeling the empty plastic from the crackers they'd shared into sliver-thin stripes before tossing them one by one into the fire. "Thing is though, she found walkers, dead ones, after the fact. Like someone hadn't just helped her when she needed it, but kept her safe on top of it."

He frowned. Not sure which woman he was referring to. There had been two that he could remember, at least since he'd crossed the border. The other had been a teenager shivering beside a coal-lit fire. He'd waited until she'd dropped off to sleep before he'd left her his spare coat. He stayed distant, making sure no walkers came close overnight before he left just before dawn. She'd been alone, just like him. The details still stuck with him though, no matter how hard he tried he hadn't been able to forget the way she'd been curled up like that. Face dirty, tear-streaked and crusted with dried blood, all indications she'd recently lost someone. But still wrapped through with a sort of desperate confidence in the way she kept her long-knife close, telling him that at the very least she knew how to handle herself. She didn't need him. And he didn't need her. But it hadn't stopped him from lingering - _fussing_. She'd put up no counter-measures around her camp so in a sense, she'd made the decision to stick around for him. It was a lapse that had irritated him for days afterwards.

_She should have known better._

It took him a minute to realize the man hadn't stopped talking. He was still there, stuck on that same topic, listing off examples. The last few months of his life made needlessly exemplary for reasons he couldn't understand. A handful of acts highlighted in living color like there was actual an end point to the man's disjointed ramble.

"Now, I think they're all the same guy, personally. It's all the same m.o."

"Improbable, statically," he answered, the line of his mouth going dangerously thin.

"It's just a theory," Paul shrugged, leaning back until the joints in his spine popped audibly. Giving him the impression of a slim build in peek physical condition, lithe muscle, compact and capable before the man's trench coat pooled back into his lap. "So, I've been keeping an eye out. Thinking, I figure a guy like that – someone who is willing to help out complete strangers - is someone worth knowing. And here you are."

"Here I am," he echoed, tone so flat he could have been coding. Refusing, for once, not to feel like prey as he slowly reached forward and grasped the handle of the pot firmly in his fist. Thinking about it for a long, lingering moment before he finally curled his fingers around the neck of the stranger's canteen and filled it to the brim. Doing the same for himself before he rose carefully. Looming above both the stranger and the dying fire as the wind picked up and the scent of ochre and wet – the smell of the world on the cusp of rain – colored the air with the echoes of change he had no interest sticking around to hear.

"I'm leaving now."

He walked away while the man was still sputtering.

* * *

It wasn't until later, when he was holed up in the second story of an Industrial management company. Watching the sky open up between the last afternoon rays as the beginning rumbles of thunder made tracks through the quiet, that he realized his bundle of notebooks was missing from his pack.

* * *

" _Somebody's got to keep a record of what we've gone through. It'll be a_ _part of our history_ _."_

He'd said that once.

A lifetime ago.

Maybe more.

He'd believed it too.

Now those words were gone.

_Lost._

All his observations.

All his thoughts.

All his theories and findings.

He was angry enough to be reckless once the weather cleared. Angry enough to circle back and chance running across the man again as he turned the campsite upside down. Wondering if it'd simply fallen out of his pack. If he'd somehow left it behind in his hurry to get from the other man.

But it hadn't.

The man had taken it.

_Stolen it._

It took the threat of bitter-hot tears to realize how angry he was.

Standing there in the middle of nowhere with his fists clenched and teeth bared. Hair plastered thick to his scalp with rain water and washed-out red as the green provided no answers. There were no tracks. No trail. No sign the other man had even been there at all save for the half-melted wrappers still curled around the dead-dark embers of the fire pit.

It was the first real emotion he could remember having since-

* * *

He'd lost track of the days a long time ago. But it couldn't have been more than half a week after that moment in the woods that he looked up from killing a trio of walkers in a convenience store and found the man – Paul – staring back at him from the other side of the aisle.

He figured his expression must have said it all when the man raised his palms again. Zeroing in on the flash of crumpled white in the right as the man held out his bundle of notebooks like a guilty child.

"I realize I might have come on a bit strong last time around," the man started, expression a fraction more wary than it had been the first time. Watching the slow drip of red puddle across the tiles from the swinging point of his machete.

"You stole from me," he bit off, aggressively quiet as the man winced. Long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail this time. But still wearing the same clothes, meaning wherever he was from, he hadn't been back. Which meant something worse as far as he was concerned. The man had been watching him. Certainly all this time, but possibly even longer.

"Yes," Paul agreed, not denying it. "I wish I could say I was sorry about that, but I had to be sure. You left in the middle of our chat and I wanted to know if I was right."

His head tilted, the ghost of his old curiosity rising up without his permission.

"Sure of what?"

"That you're a good person. That you're worthy of a good place," the man insisted, twisting his wrist so that the metal clasp on one of the journals caught the light streaming through the dirty windows. "I read them, your journals. I read every single line. I know the difference between truth and fiction and nothing about these were censored. It was all you all the way back to the beginning. And you're still that person. _A good person_."

"I am not anything," he snapped back, hands fisting as his attention switched from the man's face to the bundle of journals. _Those were his private- everything he was, everything he'd been was in there and the man had flipped through them like-_

"Is that so hard to believe?" Paul questioned, more forceful than before like he was gaining steam for something. Ignoring his pointed looks when he gestured for the man to put his journals down on the empty shelf and slide them over. "Is it so hard to believe that someone else can see it?"

_Yes._

_No._

_Yes._

"It's time to stop being afraid," the man murmured. "It's time to try. Take a chance. Come with me. We have a place, a home. We could use someone like you. What you were and what you are now. We're building something but it's still rustic. And we don't have a lot of fighters. You know how to handle yourself. And we have an old manor with a hell of a lot of old equipment I know you could probably put to good use."

Hysteria rose like bile in the back of his throat.

He was the eighth deadly sin, freshly forged.

Encompassing weakness with the ability to spread.

Because he was actually considering it. He couldn't help picturing it. For a split second he even wanted to. Then Andrea's face flashed, red-streaked and screaming in his mind's eye and the desire shattered. He recoiled, slamming back against the empty ice-cream cooler set against the far wall.

_He couldn't._

"No."

"Why not?" the stranger asked, face expressive and open. But like he actually deserved an answer. Like he fully believed what he was saying. That he was everything he was promising and more and just couldn't fathom why he'd refuse.

"Milton-"

He was already moving past when the man tried to stop him. Pressing his palm against his chest the same moment something inside him just _snapped_. His fist was a warning sign when it drew back and used the man's jaw as a focal point, surprising the both of them with a sloppy uppercut as he lips curled back into a trembling snarl.

The sensation of blood trickling between his fingers was a makeshift gauge of give and take. An unfamiliar sensation that made him hesitate just a fraction of a beat too long as the man stumbled back, nose bleeding, only to surge forward and turn the tables. Catching him around the waist as the shelves collapsed under them and sent them sprawling.

He flailed out frantically. Feeling the grunt and a surprised explosion of air against his face whenever one of his hits landed. Trying to wrestle his way out of the man's grip. Snarling angry as the scream of rusting metal and clattering corner pins echoed over-loud in the empty building.

He managed to wedge the stranger into a sharp corner and gain the upper hand before the flat of the man's palm caught him solidly in the solar plexus. Collapsing him like a house of cards as he wheezed, struggling to breathe. Only vaguely conscious that it had been a learned move, precise and trained, before the stranger flipped them. Landing astride and trying to pin down his arms as panic flushed a surge of adrenaline through his system.

"Get off me!" he yelled, hoarse and so unlike himself he didn't realize the words had come from him until the ache from his wounded throat throbbed into prominence.

"Stop!" the man returned, breathing hard. Arms braced over his as he caught him by the wrists and struggled to fold them into his chest. "Stop! _Stop_. Look, whatever it is, whatever it was, it's over. _Done._ It's time to stop running. Please. _Hey_ \- look at me. Milton, look at me!"

But he wasn't listening.

Instead he froze.

_Because he was hard._

Pressed up against him like this, he could feel it.

He was so hard his head was almost spinning with it.

His cheeks burned with shame and confusion as the Paul's palms curled gently-strong around the inner of his wrists. Ashamed to say that regardless of the situation, the man, this moment, the strangeness of this entire situation, had stirred something in him he didn't quite understand. Something he'd figured had never existed until right here and right now. And worse, something he couldn't in good faith pass off as adrenaline or normal sexual frustration.

_This was something else._

_Something more._

He cracked a lid when the man stilled on top of him and the silence grew humid and close. Swapping air as the man looked down at him, blinking and almost uncertain. Not disgusted but honestly looking just as surprised as he was. Expression changing in real time, from calm to understanding and then-

He strongly believed he would have hated that look on anyone's face. But he used the moment anyway and brought his left knee slamming up. Catching him in the gut as Paul collapsed into himself with an inverted yell. Clutching his stomach as he used every second to his advantage and rolled away. Scrambling crab-like before his feet finally met the concrete and sent him half-falling out the door and into the open air.

He ran. Dodging abandoned cars as his bent glasses slid down his nose. Heart thumping like a heart attack in his chest as the desperate need to be _awayawayaway_ screamed through him like nothing else he'd ever experienced. It was a different sort of fear. It was fear saturated in hope and a thousand other dangerous things that masqueraded themselves in soothing colors and familiar notes. Only half conscious he'd lost his machete as he fumbled with his belt knife, trying to get it in his hand before-

Paul hit him running. Sending them careening down into the highway ditch in a tangle of muddy limbs and bared white teeth. He fought. Yelling. _Struggling_. But he was so tired. He was exhausted and hungry and so worn down that he just wanted everything to stop. He wanted to sink down into the tepid muck and never get up again. He want to lash out and make it hurt. He wanted to live for something more than he was now. He wanted to hide. He wanted-

"I did hear you, you know," the man murmured, soft and quietly as he held him down into the dirt. Easing the fight out of him in inches as he tasted the mineral rich grit of the soil against his tongue. "Everything you weren't saying. Your pain? I know. God, believe me. _I know_. But you can't let it own you. You're more- more than that pain. More than those mistakes. More than what you fear the most. I promise. Please- let me. Let me show you."


	5. Chapter 5

A scientist, huh?" Gregory drawled, looking exceedingly uninterested when he refused to rise to the bait and tell the man what he wanted to hear. That he was grateful to be accepted. That what they'd managed to build here was nothing short of remarkable. That he must be a 'truly capable leader' to maintain all this. "Well, we can certainly use one of those."

His eyes narrowed, half folding into the dark hollows underneath when the man leaned in and gave him a barely perceptible sniff. Expression disapproving as a rankled shudder surged through him like muted rage.

"But why don't you get yourself cleaned up, hmm? Then we can talk. It's a chore keeping things clean around here. You understand," Gregory posed before turning back to his study, dismissive. "Jesus will show you around."

He'd liked being clean once.

He didn't remember what that felt like.

But he did know it had been important to him at some point.

He used to be fastidious.

He'd had rituals.

Things that needed to be done before he could leave the house for the day.

His life had been neat.

Ordered.

_Precise._

His bare feet curled in his boots, socks long since worn through and repurposed elsewhere as he allowed his mind to cycle back. Remembering introductions. New faces. Haunted eyes. Piece-meal stories and near-hostile stares.

_Had they been like this in Woodsbury?_

_So dismissive of other people's pain?_

_Of what they'd gone through – survived?_

By the time he looked up, Gregory was gone. Study door clicking shut like the end of a sentence. Leaving him surrounded by a treasure trove of history he normally would have had a million questions about, but now just felt numb.

Because the hard truth was, he wasn't the same person he'd been before all this.

Being on his own.

Fighting.

_Surviving._

It'd done something to him.

_Changed him._

He was a finished product now.

Smoothed out.

Mature.

_Hardened._

And for the first time in his life, his social backbone cricked tight in the aftermath of Gregory's tone. He hadn't survived for months on his own to put up with a prick like that for a leader. That wasn't who he was anymore. It wasn't who he wanted to be. He was done hiding behind civility, even if it meant relative safety and three solid meals a day. He'd already lived under one tyrant. He'd supported him. Made excuses for him. Tried to reach him when no one else was willing to try. He wasn't going to put himself through that again.

His lips firmed into a singular, slashing line as the creak of an antique chair issued from beyond the thick mahogany doors. Highlighting the divide the man clearly enjoyed perpetuating. Momentarily deaf to everything else as the sound of Phillip's disingenuous laughter rippled through the air around his head like an errant ghost.

It was only Paul's steady presence at his back that kept him from walking away completely.

"Hey," the man muttered, like he knew, gesturing off towards the spiral staircase. Piling on the words before he could change his mind. "Come on, I'll show you to the showers."

It was coaxing, but he allowed it.

Everything being equal, he imagined it would be nice to be clean again.

* * *

 

The water was hot.

That was all he really registered at first.

It was judgement and rebirth and a sense of newness he hadn't expected after he'd peeled off his layers and stood fully naked in the elaborate bathroom for the first time in months. It was warm and steady and there was already steam rising like low-lying fog. Misting across mirror on the opposite wall until everything but his shadow was erased.

It seemed appropriate.

He felt disconnected.

_Disconcerted._

Like none of this was real.

Like the world was a step ahead of him and he was struggling to make sense of the blur.

He hissed – flinching full – when the spray hit him. Curling into himself like it was a blow he had to get used to as he gripped the plastic edges and felt his way near-sightedly towards the dials.

But he didn't turn the temperature down.

He cranked it up.

_He made it hurt._

* * *

 

The next thing he was aware of was coming back to himself sitting cross-legged on the tiles at the bottom of the shower. Contemplating the thick metal of the intricate claw bathtub on the other side of the room through the gap in the curtain as it stuck plastic-slick across his bare legs. It reminded him of the one at his grandparent's house he'd always been fascinated by but never once used. And neither had his grandparents, come to think of it.

Instead, it had existed solely as a vanguard to old-fashioned frivolity everywhere.

Useless and out of time.

He stayed under the spray until the water ran cold.

Even then he didn't reach up to turn it off until his teeth started clacking.

The best part was that he didn't feel guilty about it at all.

* * *

 

He swiped his palm over the mirror.

Cutting a path through the steam as he rediscovered himself.

Allowing it for the first time in a long time.

He didn't question it when his gaze eventually strayed downwards. Lingering on the towel wrapped half-hazard around his waist and the ribs he couldn't remember being so visible since he'd been thirteen and fledgling-thin.

He'd lost weight.

Got lean.

He'd gained runner's definition where there hadn't been anything but gentle flesh before.

But he was also marked.

_Scarred._

The outside reflecting the inside, he supposed.

He nearly upset the towel around his waist when a gentle knock echoed through the carved-oak doors. Lunging instinctively to where he'd left his machete as his bare feet threatened to slip across the slick tiles. He didn't even have time for a shirt before Paul opened the door and stuck his head through the crack. Giving him the fish-eye about the machete before choosing to ignore it completely.

"Oh good, I thought you'd melted down the drain by now," the man said with a grin, holding out a small pile of clothes. "Here, you can change into these. Give me your old ones. You'll get 'em back, I promise. Chelsea is already on my ass to bring them down to the wash. She is a seamstress – the only person that knows what to do with a needle around here actually – and she is already itching to fix them up for you. Is that alright?"

He nodded, fingers scratching idly through the stubble on his cheeks and chin he'd been too drained to tackle in full. The beard was gone thanks to a pair of trimmers that'd been set beside sink. But he hadn't had the energy for the rest. And really, perhaps that was the point. He wasn't the kind of person who shaved every morning no matter what anymore. It was one thing he'd gotten over quick on his own. If he was being honest, he used to have something of a nervous tick when it came to down to it. Fastidious and almost hyper conscious of the itch against his skin.

He'd never liked the feeling of his own rough.

Now- well, he figured he was just used to it.

Paul made no effort to hide his gaze as he watched him collect his clothes. Holding onto the corner of the towel just in case as he crossed to the door and handled him the bundle. Nose twitching at the reek of them as dried blood fluttered down to coat the white tiles like powder rain.

"Great, get dressed and I'll be right back to show you where your room is," the man told him, softly bright before he paused in the middle of pulling away. Long hair swinging forward, air-drying from his own shower and filling the room with a pleasant scent that was on the tip of his tongue when it came to giving it a name. "Oh, and I gotta say, for a guy who was covered in guts the first time I saw him, you sure as hell clean up nice."

Paul was gone before he could reply. Leaving him blinking into the empty room as his towel finally lost its fight with gravity and puddled around his ankles. Trying to figure out what had just happened as the ghosts of old insecurities threatened to regain their tracks in the dried out ruts that criss-crossed through his mind's eye.

He shook the thoughts away in favor of ripping open a new package of briefs and pulling on a washed out pair of jeans. Stomach rumbling as he spared a glance at the door every so often as the clean scent of the man lingered.

He had a feeling there was going to be a lot of similar exits like that in the future.

* * *

 

"I had your dinner sent up," Paul explained, indicating to the tray of food on the small bedside table. Perhaps the only normal looking piece of furniture in the entire room. Which featured, amongst other things, a closet big enough for him to lay down sideways and a giant four-poster bed he wasn't entirely sure what to do with. Guest quarters until he could be assigned something more permanent. "I figured you wouldn't be up for twenty questions. The others mean well, but it's been a while since they've seen anyone new. They don't exactly get out much."

"Not like you?" he returned, eating slowly – carefully.

Anyone that didn't know him any better would think it was neatness, manners. But in truth every measured spoonful of the thick, barley stew was forced. Fighting the part of him that wanted to turn away and shovel it down as fast as possible. That wanted to ignore the sandwich and squirrel it away for later. The part that told him how many meals he could get out of everything on his plate if he rationed it right. All while also trying to navigate the other, very real part that reminded him how hungry he was. How his relationship with food was caustic and one-sided and if he could just eat fast enough then maybe he'd be able to-

Less time for him to lose it.

Less time for Paul and Gregory to change their minds.

Less time for-

Paul laughed, melodious and honest as he cocked a hip against the window. Arms crossed over his chest, looking out at Hilltop with a smile as dusk fell.

"No. Not like me," the man admitted. "I get all antsy when I've been cooped up too long. And better me out there than them, I say. We all have roles. We all have a place here, a job. Part of my job is to look for people, people like you. People worth saving."

The remnants of his wounded pride rose remarkably quickly.

"You didn't save me," he remarked bluntly, around a mouthful of fluffy, hearth-made bread. Feeling the lingering throb from the slow forming bruises that reminded him how hard won this moment truly was.

It wasn't completely true, but the sentiment remained steady.

"No," the man agreed, brown hair curtaining as he looked down at his feet for a long moment before looking back up and catching his gaze. "You chose to save yourself."

He frowned, caught. Still working through it when the man indicated at his tray.

"You know you can have seconds, right?" Paul remarked, reading his mind, or maybe just his face as his fingers froze around the last half of the sandwich he'd been debating saving for later. "There isn't any rationing here."

"We're both growing boys after all, don't you think?" the man remarked with a wink. Scooping up his tray with a grin and cocking his head to the side like he was waiting for something. Some social cue he didn't recognize or maybe just a thank you.

In another life, his cheeks would have heated. But instead of saying anything, he just stared. He stared for so long that he eventually nodded. Giving the man the permission he'd apparently been waiting for as he grinned and told him he'd be right back.

The silence that ushered in his wake seemed surprisingly sub-standard. Leaving him with nothing to do but wait until Paul returned carrying two more trays and a thermos of tea. Setting them down on the small office table beside the bathroom as he gestured for him to join him.

That was the first meal they ate together.

Surprisingly it wasn't the last.


	6. Chapter 6

He didn't sleep that night.

Or the next.

He stayed up, watching the door.

The windows.

Listening to the old house creak and settle-shift.

He waited for them to show their true face.

To prove him right.

Only they didn't.

Honestly, he didn't know which option was worse.

* * *

The third day, he slept.

In fact, he slept right through.

When he finally woke up, the middle of the night on the fifth day found him padding quietly down the hall in a bleary search for the bathroom. Stumbling a bit as he blinked sleep out of his eyes and more or less managed to remember to shut the bathroom door with the least amount of noise possible. Still, when he was finished Paul was sitting on one of the lounge chairs on the opposite side of the hall, waiting for him.

The man made no show of hiding it when he gave him a clear once over. Eying him from head to toe. Rumpled, barefoot, cow-licked and feeling like nothing was quite real, before placing his bundle of journals – _the same one's he'd stolen, what almost a week ago?_ – on the footstool in front of him.

"Want to talk about it?" Paul asked quietly, leaning forward. Tan sweater rucked up to the elbows. Palms spread over his knees like it wasn't just an open invitation for what was in the journals, but for everything. For right here, right now and all those awful, dangerous little bits that were stuck in-between.

Things like the near half dozen pieces of ammunition he'd already manage to squirrel away, bullet by bullet, from their pathetic little armory when the guards weren't looking. Things like how he was secretly afraid that he'd forgotten how to sleep on a bed and had spent half of it lying side-ways, mostly falling off. Things like how he'd eaten far too much that first night and spent the early morning heaving it all back up. Things like how he didn't want to-

He bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted red.

_He was a trigger warning made flesh._

_He couldn't-_

"Memories have teeth," he replied simply, repeating a dead woman's words like they were his own. Only this time his voice was so steady that unless he'd felt it coming, unless he'd heard the words coming from his own throat, he would have thought it hadn't come from him at all.

Because he didn't feel like he sounded.

_Collected._

_Stable._

"Yes," Paul agreed, nodding like he'd managed to say something profound before swaying to his feet. All long-legged grace and sure muscles that hadn't known the slacking weakness of real hunger as the man stared him in that way he had. "Yes, they do. But are you ready to start trying?"

His bare feet curled across the polished hardwood. He had questions. Questions like why Paul was choosing now to give back his journals. Why he cared. Why the man was making this entire thing personal when he could have washed his hands of him days ago. Why he was thinking about tomorrow. Today. Even five days into the future when the idea of it only a week ago had seemed unfathomable and impossible.

Instead, he nodded.

After that the days passed quicker.

* * *

He settled into a rhythm, eventually.

A routine.

He still went out, keeping his skills and machete sharp. More often than not with Paul whenever the Hilltop was in need of supplies. Slowly meeting their network of trading partners as his face started to lose the gaunt edge of sharpness being out on his own had carved out.

But he also starting making sense of the equipment in the manor's sub basement. Figuring out what could be used, re-purposed or just trashed all together. Gregory had him making chemical solutions for the most part. Mind-numbingly vapid tasks, but ones he took on eagerly all the same. Finding a familiar solace in their simplicity. There was no grey area when it came to this type of science. You either made the solution correctly or you didn't.

Science had always been his escape, and this was no exception.

Still, Paul always managed to drag him out. Taking him around to meet people. Forcing him to remember names, faces, connections. He'd like to say it had happened gradually – forcibly. But the truth was everything with Paul was organic – natural – _easy_.

These days when he looked in the mirror, his eyes looked less haunted.

He laughed now, genuinely.

And as always, Paul stayed close.

It wasn't something he'd expected, but it was something he'd come to value.

_Count on._

Even look forward to.

Unable to help up set himself up for disappointment as the days passed and his grudging admiration for the man started to evolve in a way he never would have expected. Either from himself or their less than affable beginnings.

* * *

"Why is Gregory the leader?" he asked plainly one day while they were coming back from a meeting with their newest trading partner. They'd stopped for lunch on the side of the road, propped up against the grassy hillside as Paul stretched out beside him in the long grass. Hands behind his head and eyes closed like any minute now he was going to hear snoring.

The man hummed his way through a low-lying laugh.

"Why wouldn't he be?"

"You're a leader, _the leader_ , they look to you," he returned, peeling the skin off a small apple with his pocket knife before he handed the man the first slice. The first pickings from a small orchard a few miles away from Hilltop that had grown wild in the absence of people. Giving voice to something he'd suspected for quite some time now but hadn't had the necessary data to back it up until recently.

The others ultimately followed Gregory, but they respected Paul's opinion on a scale that often surpassed any loyalty they had to the former. When there were important decisions to be made, Paul was always in the room and nine times out of ten, things went the way _he_ suggested.

"Don't let Gregory hear you say that," Paul remarked, amused. Popping the slice into his mouth and making an appreciative sound at the sweetness. "Some would call that treasonous talk ya' know."

Something about the sound made his belly tighten in response.

Simmering a growing, familiar warmth he hadn't felt since-

He ignored it.

"There is nothing Gregory can do to me," he replied, cutting slice for himself. It wasn't a complete sentence, but Paul knew him well enough not to press for more. At least not in the way most people would have. Allowing him time to compose himself as an after image of Phillip's deranged face flickered in and out in existence in front of him.

"Not anymore, you mean?"

He nodded, letting the silence do the rest as he considered how not that long ago, he'd used words like shields. Prone to nervous babble and an overabundance of complex terms when he knew full well a laymen's understanding would have been better received. Being on his own had taught him that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, you could say more with silence than you could with words.

He watched the man's boots waver lazily, flirting with the stems of the wild flowers they were more or less surrounded in. Warm and amused as he anticipated the man's answer before it could leave his lips.

"I suppose the short answer is, who wants that? Honestly? People like Gregory _want_ the position. They like the prestige. But I don't. That type of politics doesn't interest me and despite Gregory's- well, being who he is – when it comes down to it, he _is_ good at it. Not the best. But still good. And this way I can still come and go- when I am home and I can be there, fully. But when I am out there? I don't know, it's two-fold. It's for them, but it's also for me, you know?"

He nodded. Because weirdly enough, he _did_ know.

This new world had a way of changing you.

Sometimes for the good.

Sometimes for the better.

But when push came to shove, change was inevitable.

He squinted, checking his watch before doing the same with the position of the horizon. The sun was shining down hard, like fall wasn't just around the corner. Ready to lull them into a false sense of security. It made him think about the winter. About rationing and finding some way to mitigate the cold. About his current estimates of the Hilltop's food stores and next year's seedlings and-

He was startled out of his thoughts when the man tossed a handful of grass at him. Feeling the earthy strands tickle down his nose. Getting caught in the bridge of his glasses as he expelled a huff that made Paul bark with laughter. Rolling away into the long, wheat-grass as he watched him open mouthed. Unsure of what to do with the suspicious itch in his limbs that yearned to do something remarkably childish. Like toss it back, chase after or worse.

"Com'on Milton! It's a beautiful day! Enjoy it while it lasts!"

He arched a brow when the man popped up on the other side of the thicket. Long hair mussed up and seeded with mulch and a couple seasons worth of dead leaves. Eying the pine cone beside him consideringly as Paul just smiled right back. Daring him with warm eyes and a cocky smile.

Paul had a way of encouraging that sort of behavior in him.

And in all fairness, he hadn't had any desire so far to stop rising to the bait.

* * *

He gave the feelings a couple weeks of starvation.

But they didn't fade.

In fact, they only got worse.


	7. Chapter 7

It was months later and well into winter when he pulled into the Hilltop. Pleased to be back from a week long courtesy call to their newest neighbors - helping them get the electricity going in their camp – and was automatically looking around for Paul when Doctor Harlan pulled him aside and told him that Paul was two days late from a three-day supply run.

Gregory sighed like the entire conversation was undeserving of his time and patience when he cornered him by the gates. Exhaling a volumous plume into the cold that spoke of petty irritation when he stood squarely in the man's path. Hackles rising under the privacy of his skin as the man held up a hand to stall him.

"Look, I know you're still new around here _Mr._ Mamet," the man sniped formally. Putting emphasis on the first part like he didn't have more degrees to his name than the man had uncapped teeth. "Jesus can take care of himself. If we spent our time and supplies sending out search parties for people who are in all likelihood just moseying along window shopping, _well_ , that's manpower and supplies we just won't see a return on. It isn't practical. You can appreciate that, I'm sure."

"It's been almost three days," he pointed out, blunt and apologetic as Andy, Harlan and Crystal listened from the sidelines. "It's below freezing long before nightfall. Has been for weeks. What if he's hurt? Trapped? Unless he's in a position where he can help himself – which, if he was, he should have been back by now – he won't last long without help."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the other three twitch and exchange glances.

"Paul – _Jesus_ ," he corrected, remembering that he was virtually the only one that still insisted on calling the man by his given name. "Is an asset. I may not have been here long, but I know that with places like this, you _protect_ your assets. The same as you would out there. That isn't sentiment. That's logic. It makes sense."

"Consider it this way," he countered, speaking right over the man's attempt to break in as he forced his gaze to fall on the other three in turn. Making sure he met their gaze as Harlan, Crystal, Andy stared back at him with various shades of discomfort. "Can we risk losing the best recruiter and fighter this place has over a tank of gas and some manpower?"

Gregory merely frowned, perturbed.

Unfortunately, that was about as far as he got on the matter before he was summarily dismissed. Forced to watch the older man walk away with Kal and Craig in tow. Muttering about the burdens of leadership and 'thinking beyond the moment' towards the 'bigger picture' as his nails bit into the blunt of his palms.

He felt something dark rise in the back of his throat. Thick and pervasively slow as he stood there in the middle of the compound and tried not to let his anger show. Remembering a time when anger, true anger, had been almost foreign to him as he sucked in a breath and held it. Glasses chill and threatening to fog across the bridge of his nose as the season's first real skiff of snow slowly started to fall.

All in all, it didn't exactly lend itself to the example of a good omen.

* * *

It took him until nightfall to realize what it was.

_Fear._

Only for the first time in a long time it wasn't for himself.

_He was scared for Paul._

* * *

The next morning, he started planning. He squirreled away three days worth of supplies and the half-box of bullets he'd saved from various supply runs since coming to Hilltop. He made sure he was quietly visible at dinner with the others, scribbling away at his notebook, just like always.

Gregory barely spared him a glance.

It was almost too easy.

But then again, Gregory had never been the one he'd been worried about.

* * *

Andy stopped him at the rear gate like he'd been waiting for him to pull just that. Giving him a clear up and down- taking in his backpack, machete and winter gear before shaking his head and sneaking a glance up at the dark windows of the manor.

But instead of calling him out or taking him in to see Gregory, the man just sighed and tossed him the keys to the Jeep parked close to the gate. Knuckling the back of his head like an anxious tell before the fog of his breath hazed out, pearl-white and possible between them.

"There'll be hell to pay when Gregory finds out, but just- just bring him home."

* * *

The shocks on the right front side creaked and groaned every other bump and tease of the brake. Just another worry that was collecting dust beside the treacherous road conditions and the near blizzard on the other side of the windshield. There were chains on the tires, of course, but judging by the slide every time he turned the wheel the amount of good they were doing on an unploughed road was negligible.

_This was perhaps the stupidest thing he'd ever done._

_And yet, he kept driving._

He spent the time trying to discern what else was wrong with the Jeep – distracting himself as he squinted into the blowing snow. He stopped when he reached at least ten potential problems. Realizing that at the very least it was negating the point. And at the very worst, only making his anxiety rise all the higher.

His only saving grace was that the majority of the snow wasn't sticking. Blowing in white-out wisps over the blacktop. It was the black ice you had to watch out for. Someone three miles back had learned that the hard way. Not Paul, but someone else. _A stranger._ He'd checked. He had to. The walker belted in the front seat still had the crumpled picture of a smiling woman and two children frozen to the bloody skin of its free hand before his knife sank home and ended it good.

He had the route Paul planned to take, so he stuck to the usual roads. Hoping to find him broken down on his way home or- at worst, laying low in one of the safe houses they used for emergencies. Only he wasn't. There was no sign of Paul at all and soon he had to hunker down himself. Sleeping fitfully beside a small, hearth-bound fire in the last safe house on the list. Watching the reflection of the flames dance across his eyelids as his brain buzzed with muted, anxious energy. Waiting until first light to start all over again.

By the third day he was low on gas and looking down a fork in the road. The signposts were sleeted thick with icy snow. One of them was familiar, a direction that he and Paul had gone more than once. And the other was not. He had to make a choice. Statistically he would be more inclined to choose the path most traveled. But considering he was _not_ Paul, he had to take into account other variables.

Like the man's complete lack of survival skills in the middle of a blizzard, apparently.

He sighed, rubbing at his eyes as he ignored the chill of his breath pluming out in front of him. Knuckles clenching and unclenching around the steering wheel as the sun-bleached rubber threatened to crack and twist. Feeling the cold of the outside leech into his bones in real time before he slammed the gearshift in reverse. Skating on no traction for a handful of beats as the action translated into frustration and acrid fear.

He hid the Jeep under an awning tarp behind the garage of the nearest house before setting out on foot down an unfamiliar road. Finally understanding what Andrea had said all those months ago. That when you knew what you were fighting for, the rest was remarkably simple.

_Paul was important._

_Important to Hilltop._

_Important to him._

Those were the facts.

Now he had to figure out what to do with them.

If they both got out of this alive, that is.


	8. Chapter 8

Aware was he was, in the white-blind of the building storm, he nearly walked right into middle of them. He was able to jerk back and hide himself around a tree with less than a hair's breath to spare when the closest walker turned unsteadily on it's heel. Bare feet peeling and raw against the rocky snow. Scenting the air as it's thinning, patch-work hair swung in frozen, clumping tendrils against it's shoulders.

He wormed his way out of his pack with difficulty. Unsheathing his machetes and crouching low as he skirted around the edges of the group. Looking for a way through as the walkers staggered slowly forward. It didn't take long to figure out that getting around them was going to be a serious problem.

His heart sank. The herd was massive. Easily five hundred strong, maybe more. And that was just the ones he could see. He had no way of knowing how many were behind him, how many were ahead or even how long it'd been passing through for. It was likely from one of the cities. One of the safe zones that'd been overrun with all those people packed into them like sardines in a tin. Maybe even from Washington. It'd probably been on the move ever since. Following stimulus – a yell or an escaping car - until they started trickling out of the city limits and just kept going. Picking up roamers along the way.

If he could have seen an aerial view, he would have guessed that their numbers swelled in the middle. Shambling listlessly just like any other herd animal heading towards an unknown destination. He'd seen this before, but never this large.

_Paul._

It stood to reason that if Paul had stumbled across the same problem on his way home he would be laying low. Waiting for them to pass. Which in this storm probably meant he was close by, holed up somewhere half-frozen. Debating with himself whether it was worth the risk to make a fire. All he had to do was find him.

He didn't think about the alternative.

_He couldn't._

Not here.

Not now.

Not when he was this close to-

* * *

He approached what came next logically. More or less unaffected – detached - when he took down a walker at the very edge of the herd. Nothing more than a passing shape in the gloom as he sliced off a section of scalp and brain and let it drop. Taking a calculated risk that the others couldn't sense him through in the storm as he lurched to the side, copying the surrounding walkers as they turned to look at the fallen shape. Angling around curiously before their attention hazed away again. He waited until they'd started staggering through the drifts again before he dragged the body behind a clump of leaf-bare brush and out of sight.

He used his belt knife to cut away the wisps of clothing. Leaving it in a sun-bleached bra and what he could only figure had once been a rather smart looking pencil black skirt before he ripped into the walker's soft underbelly and got to work.

He was halfway through uncoiling the intestines when the tang of vomit rose up in his throat. Able to turn his head to the side just in time to waste the hurried breakfast he'd wolfed down that morning. Grimacing as he wiped his mouth and pulled the rest of the organ out with an angry jerk. Wrapping it around his pack so that his back would be covered in its scent.

There was no time.

No time to stop.

No time to be weak.

No time to curse himself for getting soft.

And for allowing himself to fall into the trap that called itself complacency.

Into old habits and self destructive ways of thinking that had no place in the world anymore.

If Paul was nearby, especially this close to the herd, he had to be able get around undetected. He didn't need the Milton Mamet with the churning belly and trembling fingers. The one who'd gotten Andrea killed. Who was responsible for everything he hadn't been able to stop. He needed the Milton who had lashed out, desperate and feral-vicious on the road. The Milton that knew how to survive. How to live. How to fight. How to-

The blood was tacky and thick between the fingers of his gloves when he scooped it up. Refusing to come to terms with the fact that it felt remarkably full circle as he smeared the foul, clotted blood across his face and clothes.

_He couldn't._

After all, things that came full circle generally indicated an end of some sort, didn't they?

And that was something he didn't want to think about, especially when it came to Paul.

Not for a long time.

* * *

Just as he'd suspected there was a suburb less than a mile away from the natural corridor the herd was moving through. Most of the houses were trashed. Host to kicked in doors and year old leaves, debris and animal scat. But even then it didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. A thin breath of smoke trailing up from the chimney of a four gable house at the end of the block. Far enough away to be out of sight of the herd in the storm, but enough that for him it stood out like a beacon.

_Paul._

_It had to be._

But the number of cars pulled up front caught his attention. Making him hesitate – wary as he took it in from a safe distance. Deciding to play it smart for the time being in favor of getting a better look. Ignoring the insistent little voice that pushed at him to just toss it all to the wind and make sure Paul was okay. He frowned, adjusting his glasses as he slowly rose to his feet behind the cover of the collapsed gutters of the house opposite. Squinting a bit when he noticed the ground floor windows had been covered from the inside.

He waited for a long moment before limping into the street. Muscles numb, long past the burning-freeze of too cold as he convinced his aching body to keep moving. Confident that if anyone spotted him he would be nothing more than a lonely walker shuffling awkwardly through the blowing snow.

There was a truck and three motorcycles pulled up on the front lawn in a rude little cluster. Hemming in the white panel van he recognized immediately as one of the vehicles from the Hilltop. The tire tracks for the truck and the motorcycles were fresh. As for the van, he couldn't tell.

The sense of wrongness only increased. Hedging caution as he snuck around the exterior of the house, knife in hand. Working his way around the worst of the snow and debris before he found an uncovered corner pane to peer in through. His glasses fogged up as snow hit the lens. Eyes stinging as a gust of wind howled mercilessly down the siding. He squinted, frustrated when the dirty glass played tricks with his own reflection.

_He could see light inside – maybe a fire in the grate - people moving._

_He just couldn't see if-_

When a shadow fell across the window, he didn't recoil - too afraid to even so much as flinch - but it was a near thing. He kept his eyes closed until the shadow moved away, leaving him apparently undiscovered as he used the lull to rub a small corner of the pane clean with the cuff of his jacket. Breathing in the sharp, metallic scent of something that was probably beyond cold as his brain played at wondering how much longer he could survive out in the open.

That was when the world might as well have stopped cold.

Because Paul _was_ inside.

He was tied to a railing in a limp tangle of cloth and skin. He'd clearly been beaten, hanging on an angle with a swollen eye. Long hair sheathed protectively over his face as he remained unmoving. Held at gun point by a group of very nasty looking men with smiles like knife slashes and fists that still had dried blood on them.

_Paul's blood._

An entirely different sort of cold stained through him as one of them, the leader, paced in front of him. Clearly dissatisfied with something Paul had said as he kicked out and caught him in the ribs. Making him groan and try and pull away despite the ropes that kept him grounded. Hands tied high above his head in clear view of the five – no, _six_ other men that made up what he could see of the group as a whole.

He reviewed the facts as he shivered under his layers.

At best it would be six against one with a herd on their doorstep.

All definitely within range of the sound of a gunshot.

Not that he had enough bullets to deal with all six of them to begin with.

There were too many to fight.

_He was going to have to get creative._

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, self-harming and vicious as his mind raced.

He had to admit that even then the odds weren't good.

"Can it, Benny! We'll deal with that once this bastard tells me where he and his little camp are. I know he has one. How else could he be laying here in front of us, so nice and pretty? Huh? He had an entire truck of shit and I wanna know where he got it. Meds like that don't grow on trees," the man snapped, slamming his hand against something loud and hollow. Startling him as the leader's voice boomed through the inner eves. Over-loud in a way had him scanning the tree-line. Wondering neurotically if any of the walkers had heard.

A muffled sound issued from the living. Catching his attention just in time for another voice to pipe in nastily. Looming over Paul's hunched form as he slid a hunting knife out of the sheath strapped to his thigh. Flipping it smartly, showing off, as the long blade glinted in the firelight. The man waited until Paul raised his head again before he sank down in front of him and grabbed Paul's calf. Pinning him down as he used the knife to slice through the rough material of his jeans all the way up to the knee.

"Better be careful pretty boy, or I'll punch out your other eye. Then you won't be able to see biters when they come to get'cha. That is if we haven't done 'ya in first. Just remember, I'm going easy on 'ya to start. The shit that comes next? Well- lets just say that after the whuppin' you gave Mick and Teeler here, I'm _dyin'_ to hear you squeal."

That was when the rest of his plan fell into place like breathing. Riding the curling tide of a slow building rage as the knife carved a shallow path down the curve of Paul's right leg. Not deep enough to seriously wound, but enough to hurt as Paul's hands seized up in brutal, clenching fists above his head. Draining bloodless and pink-pale as the ropes cut into his wrists like a tearing rash.

He forced himself away from the window and started running. Exploding down the street and into the frosted-green as the spikes he'd fastened to the bottom of his boots kept him upright. Paul's name beating an unnatural tempo inside his head as his world condensed down into one, very simple purpose.

_To win._


	9. Chapter 9

He didn't have to go far to find what he was looking for.

_A walker._

It was likely one who'd ambled away from the main herd - slowly shuffling through the thinned out brush on the edge of the neighborhood. Far enough away to be out of sight and sound of both the house and the main group as he squared his shoulders and forced his legs to move.

He didn't waste anytime. With his disguise he approached without notice, mimicking the walker's movements until he was directly behind the shambling thing. Trying not to internalize the relatively good condition of the body and the clothes – which, save for being filthy and soaked by the storm, barely looked weather beaten at all - as he followed its slow trajectory across an overgrown lawn. He waited until they'd moved into the cover of a garden shed and safely out of sight before he set to work.

The parallels to last time were stark and poignant as he sliced it's arms off at the elbow. Hacking through bone and flesh as the stink of old blood rose humid and flush in his sinuses. He pushed to the ground with a hard shove before chambering on top of it. Weighing it down as dull ivory _snap-snapped_ at him, growling. But he just gritted his teeth back. Seeing a flickering image of him and Andrea holding the first walker down. Bashing its teeth against a rock and rendering it harmless. Just another thing she'd managed to teach him before-

It hadn't been her time.

_It should have been him._

But that wasn't what ended up happening.

He'd never understood that.

Not once.

_She'd been the strong one._

The one that could have actually made a difference.

It'd haunted him all through his months alone.

All the way to the moment beside the fire with Paul when everything changed.

He grabbed the walker by the chin, forcing the poisonous thoughts back as he fumbled with the thickness of his gloves before he grabbing his machete and sinking the blade into it's open mouth. Pressing _down, down, down_ until it cut through muscle and sinew and thunked down against bone. Grating with a cringing pitch that set his teeth on edge as he put his weight into it.

He barely reacted when the blade jerked, abruptly severing the walker's lower jaw from the rest of its face. Not even so much as flinching when the glinting mess landed right in his lap. Showing off old fillings and a single gold crown.

The truth was he was too busy making sure all the teeth were safely dug out of the upper jaw to notice.

He had to move quickly.

_Paul was running out of time._

He repurposed a good chunk of the thick translucent tubing they used for siphoning gas into a makeshift lead. Tying it around the walker's neck as he led it out into the open in front of him.

It was insurance.

But it wasn't a 'just in case.'

At this point it was a logical certainty.

He tied it to a tree at the edge of the backyard before streaking over to the window again. Crouching down long enough by the window to make sure Paul wasn't in imminent danger before retreating again. Anger burning like acid in his gut as the second voice kept talking. Slicing. _Hurting._

He was shivering again, able to feel the temperature drop in real time as the wind-chill only increased. Fumbling with the small amount of gas he'd been able siphon from the tank of one of the bikes parked out front as he crawled along the edges of the house. Finding a dusty liquor bottle - vodka, cheap - in a stack of recyclables under the porch.

He'd only just finished with the makeshift wick - ripping a spare bit of shirt into strips - when the back door swung open and a man stumbled out. Shotgun drawn. He had less than a moment to flatten himself to the dirt. He used the handful of seconds as the man's eyes adjusted to the dark to pull out his gun. Easing the safety back slowly. Negotiating with a higher power that likely didn't exist to let the storm hide him.

A whisper of cold ached across his teeth. Gritted and bared into the white-out. Watching the looming shape look left over the deck, then right. Clearly cautious as the man spat audibly and cleared his throat. He didn't start breathing again until the tell-tale rasp of zipper echoed loud in the frozen quiet. Quickly followed by a splattering stream that hazed steam in an arc as the man urinated off the back deck.

His lip curled in disgust, but otherwise he didn't move. Trying to figure out how he could use the man's untimely arrival to his advantage before the walker he'd tied to the tree on the opposite side of the yard provided it for him. Growling mutely and rustling in the thorny brush as something caught its attention in the trees.

"What the shit?"

The man walked right past him. Ignoring the snow-covered lump in the snow as the walker moved restlessly. The tubing of it's leash caught in the branches of the shrub so that it crushed against the remaining leaves with an audible thrash.

He didn't hesitate.

Not even for a second.

The moment the man's back was turned he leapt to his feet. Using surprise and gravity to his advantage as the man flailed - panicking - wrenching him backwards. Shotgun slipping through bare fingers, almost too slow to be real. Before he was slapping his hand over the man's mouth and slicing his knife across the struggling arc of vulnerable skin it found there.

Red sprayed out in a fine, arterial mist long before he let the body drop. Watching the man die without expression as blood jetted - unstable and hot - across the rough of his pant legs. Feeling nothing. Nothing but contempt and the cold and a thousand other fractions of anger and rage, longing, possession and _worse-_ things that frightened him in a way he hadn't realized anything still could.

Knowing that despite how terrible it sounded, he would do it again in a heartbeat.

Perhaps not for himself.

But he would for Paul.

* * *

He'd heard someone say once that even monsters had hearts.

But now he knew it was a phrase that was host to a trick question.

That part depended on who was writing the story.

* * *

Afterwards, in a strange tilt of fate, it turned out that all he had to do was wait.

Because after about ten minutes the door swung open and predictably-

"I swear to god, if your prick has frozen off don't you think for one minute that I'm going to-"

He threw the cocktail right through the open door. Feeling the hot whoosh of the explosion as the man in the doorway screamed. Flailing as the brittle-dry wood crackled into flames.

He ran around the house, fumbling with his lighter as he cursed and struggled to get the rest of the wicks lit in the wind. Knowing he only had a handful of moments to get this done as he lobbed the next two under the front deck. Igniting the trash and refuse underneath as an accelerant before flickering red and orange started climbing the wood-slate sides. He shattered the large bay windows in either side of the house with a rock before throwing the forth and fifth into the main room.

By the time he'd raced around to the back again the group was already trying to pile out of the burning house. The first man's screams turning high and agonized, blocking the door as he writhed. Flaking burning skin across the snow before a looming shape, Benny or maybe the leader, kicked him out of the way. Sending him rolling off into the snow drifts as the audible _hissshh_ of dousing flames issued from the ground not five meters from where he was crouched. Momentarily drowning out the building panic as the four of them - no Paul - collected on the section of deck that wasn't burning. Guns up and aimed blindly into the gloom. Yelling and cursing as he backed up slowly, hunkering down beside the walker he'd tied to the treeline. Knowing he wouldn't have long to wait before-

That was when he heard them, coming in from behind. The herd - or at least part of it - drawn by the noise and the flames. He rose slowly to his feet as they emerged from the trees around him. Behind him. _Beside him._ Pushing and shoving and crowding against him as he let them envelope him. Staggering forward with them, a walking cushion against the hail of panicked bullets as the walkers lunged after the group. Falling on them in a living crush as one by one they went down - tearing and screaming.

He peeled off when he got to the house. Hauling himself up the porch steps as he dropped all pretenses. Conscious that the herd was distracted as a bullet pinged off the siding just above his head. Nearly losing his balance against the ice as he flinched, hand automatically going to his cheek as the ricochet sprayed pulverized wood into a thousand sharp little arrows. He ignored the sting as he stuffed his gun into his waistband and pulled his scarf over his face before stumbling inside. Yelling for him.

"Paul?!"

Flames were licking across the walls. The floors. The ceiling. Groaning beams and crackle-dry paint as smoke rose choking and thick. Turning the world opaque and searing as he pinged unsteadily from wall to wall.

"Paul!"

His heart was in his throat. Already thinking the worst. That he was too late. That they'd killed him before they left. That one of his Molotov cocktails had gotten him. That the fire had already reached that far. That-

"Here!"

He found him in the center of a closing circle of flames. Kicking out at the burning carpet in front of him. Still tied to the banister. Nearly falling on him as he misjudged the distance - glasses useless in the smoke.

"Milton? Mil-"

It was like a shot of adrenaline.

A system-wide reboot.

But touching him was even better.

Feeling the firm of him under his hands as he hacked through the rope and took Paul's weight into the crux of his chest and pulled him to his feet. They swaying there for delirious half second – coughing - struggling to breathe through the growing smoke.

"Milton? How did you- how are you-" Paul rasped, voice throaty and raw like he hadn't had anything to drink in hours, maybe days. Eyes wide as he took him in. _All of him._ The frozen, blood soaked layers. The stench of gore and gasoline. The hanging entrails and fresh human red that was splattered across his face. Bloody beads of it still clinging to the light hairs that feathered the downy-fine of his neck and the tops of his hands. A walking nightmare of unrecognizable sharpness. Calculating but still vulnerable - _still weak_.

"There's no time," he returned, shaking his head. Pulling a section of intestine from around his neck to drape it over Paul's shoulder. Ignoring the slight flinch as the supporting beam above their heads caught fire. Groaning like the precursor to an imminent fall. "Can you walk?"

He was already smearing the foul smelling gore from his clothes onto Paul's. Coating his face and everywhere else there was bare skin by the time the man nodded. Helping him through the burning house and out onto the deck as an ever moving sea of dead continued to spill out of the trees. Cramming up against the sides of the house, some of them already burning. Whirling, off-centre messes of bubbling skin and burning hair as Paul stiffened against him. Inhaling roughly as patterns in the crowd slowly began to emerge. Showing where the men had fallen - surrounded by squirming clusters of walkers ripping and chewing - tearing into the people who'd almost taken something precious from him. Some of them still screaming – still alive.

He ignored the screams.

He couldn't face that.

_Not now._

Not yet.

"Trust me," he whispered. Soft and ragged and such a mix between the person he'd been and the person he was now that he half wondered if Paul would recognize it all at.

He waited until the man nodded - chin high, bloody and decided - before he led them out into the crush. Paul's hand firm in his own as they caught each other's eye just before they allowed the herd to swallow them.

It wasn't a goodbye.

But it _was_ something.

* * *

It took time, but eventually they made it to the clump of trees. Scanning the milling herd and the ones still pouring in before he made a decision. Deciding to wait it out as Paul started stumbling, wounds already leaking a spitting red trail behind them as he edged warily away from the tied up walker. He pressed down on the man's shoulder wordlessly. Easing them down slowly – _ever so slowly_ – into the jutting hollow behind the cluster of trees. Keeping Paul safe and out of sight as he sank down in front of him. Sharing the chilled weight of each other as they crowded as close to the armless walker as possible. Keeping them camouflaged as the house burned – collapsing in on itself as he shook out a thermal blanket and domed it over them. Hiding them from sight as they shared the press of each other's weight. Curling close as the air underneath the blanket slowly began to warm. Creating an eco-system of iron-rust and stale humidity as the armless walker shifted restlessly with the crowd.

If they made it through the night, maybe-

* * *

"Come on," he rasped, hours later. Parched with sin and surging nausea as he slung Paul's arm over his shoulder and pulled him to his feet the same moment dawn broke across the cloudy horizon. Taking all the weight the man was still too unsteady to handle on his own as he mainlined the scent of him like an anchor. Reassuring himself that they were both here, now, as the last of the herd wandered through the hissing coals and burned out ruins of the house.

"Let's go home."


	10. Chapter 10

He kept it together – _contained_ – until they got into the van. He remembered pulling off his gloves so that he could push the key into the ignition. He remembered the groan that'd left Paul's lips when he'd tipped his head back and allowed him to strap him into his seat belt without comment. He remembered the chill of the key it in his palm and the iron-taint of old gore as his blood-smeared skin turned the metal slick with it.

He didn't drop the key.

But it was a near thing.

Instead, that was when he started shaking.

He had a fraction of a beat to get acquainted with the particular brand of hysteria he'd created before the world yawned dark and swirling in front of him. Dissolving into a mess of vibrating bones and clacking teeth. Shuddering inside his skin as flashes from the burning house rippled through his mind's eye like a lifetime of nightmares made flesh. It all came back. The dried blood on Paul's face. The man he'd gutted. The mist of living-red pebbling across his face when he'd slit his first throat. The taste of it on his tongue. The dead-cold of the shriveled organs he'd pulled from the steaming cavity as lifeless eyes watched him blankly. The way the men had fallen on one another – scrabbling and stumbling out into the open. Trying desperately to breathe through the thick hazing smoke. The people he'd killed. The feeling he'd courted when he'd found Paul in the darkness, mouth lax against his sleeve, coughing, looking up at him like he was-

He jerked like whiplash when cool hands hushed down his face, pulling him back from the etching swirl of nothingness that was still ringing in his ears like a badly tuned radio. _Paul's hands._ That was what registered second. _They were Paul's hands._ Somehow Paul had clambered out of his seat and was riding the gearshift. Leaning his warm weight into him like an anchor. Voice gentle and coaxing as he stared at him with wild, blood-shot eyes.

"Hey, hey- _hey-_ you're okay, Milton- you're okay. Look at me. That's right."

He blinked, cataloging the warm stale of the man's breath, his swollen eye, the crusts of air-drying blood dusting red flakes across his lips every other breath. He blinked again and kept on looking. Unable to look anywhere else but Paul's face as the world slowly came back into focus. Trying to push through the haze of static and dying frequencies. Breathing ragged and uneven as he slowly registered that the fist he'd made around the key in his palm was shooting pain through the core of him. Threatening more bloodshed as his stomach roiled.

"Milton, it's okay. Your fine. I'm fine. God, _com'on-_ I've got you."

The hand was back on his face. Petting, soothing and light down his cheek, like Andrea had done once, just before they'd grabbed what they could and ran. Just before he'd killed her. Just before his entire world ended and he was left wandering, alone. Only this time it was all in reverse. And now it was just Paul. He'd rewritten his own story from the end to the beginning, only this time he'd tasted the other side. He'd saved Paul- kept him safe. Just like Andrea had done for him. And despite the weakness in his limbs, he'd do it again in a heartbeat. The only thing missing was-

"I killed them," he whispered, words matter of fact and open despite the damning little quaver in his voice.

"Yes," Paul nodded, his good eye wide and emphatic. "You had no choice. You saved me. Those people? They were-"

He shook his head, trying not to hyperventilate.

_There was always a choice._

He knew that.

But it was worse than that.

Because he'd _wanted_ to.

_They'd deserved it._

In that moment, for Paul, he'd been capable of anything.

And while the man didn't say anything, choosing instead to pull him in. Encouraging him to bury close as his body did it's best to shake apart. Allowing every stolen second as the man's arms tightened around him like he needed it just as much. Warm and awkward in the enclosed space. He knew he did have to.

Paul already knew.

* * *

He drove them home when the shaking stopped. Drained and almost weightless as the morning sun stained orange across the horizon. Ignoring the unsteadiness in his limbs as he pulled into the main road and coasted gently through a thin dusting of snow. Accepting the silence for what it was as Paul leaned up against the window and just breathed. Not quite asleep, but stubbornly hopeful in a way at twinged warm in his chest.

And while he was sure he had better things to think about as he drove, he couldn't help but dwell on the way the hand that'd found its way around the knob of his knee sometime during the night seemed to had settled in to stay.

He didn't know what that meant, but he didn't pull away.

The truth was, he was ready to see what happened next.

* * *

"This can't go on," Paul murmured later, more to himself than anything as they hitched the abandoned Jeep to the back of the van. Figuring they were close enough to the Hilltop that the strain on the van's engine wouldn't be much to worry about. More concerned with getting home with Paul's supplies than the welfare of a vehicle that was probably going to end up being used for parts anyway.

"We need weapons, fighters," the man continued, smacking a dent in the hood of the van when he pounded a single, angry note into it. Uncharacteristically angry to a degree that it made him pause - looking up from the makeshift hitch with a wary expression.

"What are you suggesting?" he asked, ducking his chin into his chest as he turned up his collar against the howling chill. The snow had stopped sometime during the night, but the cold had only gotten worse. Freezing right through his layers in a way that made him seriously contemplate if he would ever be warm again.

"We need more people. Other people. _Fighters._ This? Negan? None of it would have happened if we'd been able to fight back like them," Paul hissed through gritted teeth. "If we had weapons to spare at the very least-"

"You don't know that. And other people are dangerous," he pointed out. Bringing up the obvious as he gestured towards the man's blackened eye and back the direction they'd come from. Wincing internally as he recalled a series of discomforting memories in hindsight. Things like the holes in the Governor's story when it came to Lieutenant Welles and his men and a half dozen similar situations where Woodsbury always seemed to come out the winner.

He'd never questioned it.

None of it.

Not until-

"Some are. Some aren't. You're here, aren't you?" Paul insisted, animated in that way only exhaustion and slow building frustration can bring on. "It's not that different. You just have to be sure. Those guys surprised me on the road. They had a trap set and I fell into it like an idiot - the brakes on that van are shit by the way. They weren't exactly people to bring home to meet the folks, if you know what I mean."

He considered the idea for a moment, frowning. Finally getting the hitch in place before he looked up and found Paul's eyes already on him. And, _ah-_ he knew that look. The sigh he let out was less long suffering than he'd hoped. Edging instead towards an unabashed sort of fondness as the man's hip cocked against the front grate. Waiting.

"Old world politics," he started, shaking his head with a small smile.

"What?"

"Any group that's made it this far this with their morals more or less attached - with weapons and people that know handle themselves - will likely be well situated. They will have a place, like the Hilltop," he explained slowly, considering it as the logistics spiraled out. The numbers and variables comforting and familiar in a situation that was anything but. "With the scarcity of supplies now, and the reality that those supplies are only going to get scarcer, that means we're going to see more cross-over. More supply parties reaching farther and farther from home. More run-ins with other groups. Good and bad."

The man shifted, interested. Tying his scarf tighter around the lower half of his face as he gripped his own arms through his jacket. Encouraging circulation as what little sun was left disappeared behind a sheath of low hanging cloud.

"So, the question becomes, what do we have that is valuable? What is our best trading commodity?"

"Food, and the ability to grow more reliably," Paul answered, catching onto the vein he was steering the conversation towards. Nodding slowly as he turned his head exaggeratedly, watching him with his good eye as he moved around the hitch. Stowing the tools in the trunk of the Jeep. Ignoring the fog that immediately hazed across the lens of his glasses as they climbed back into the van and put the heat on blast.

"Trade. We can trade for what we need. Just like we do with the others. Everyone needs something – wants something. Even a group with fighters and weapons is going to be lacking in some area. We can use that to our advantage if we find the right people," he remarked slowly. "Someone that won't just wipe us out and take we have."

He couldn't see Paul's face, but he could tell by the square of his shoulders that he was thinking about it. Which made everything worse, honestly. He wasn't used to someone just taking his advice, not anymore. It was a responsibility he didn't want. To be honest, he'd never wanted it. He'd just wanted to be left alone with his research. But the Governor – _Phillip_ – had made a habit out of pulling him out every so often. Asking his opinion on things. Taking an interest in his research. In what he could do for the community.

He thought he'd been helping. _Helping everyone._ But in truth, he'd only really been helping Phillip. Phillip who'd kept his own daughter turned in his apartment. Phillip who'd encouraged his experiments, trying to see if the recently turned could be reasoned with – controlled. Phillip who'd-

"I knew a group," he started. Stumbling a little as his voice threatened to fracture at the start. "Back in Georgia. Before I- that was where I was heading when we- when I-"

He shook his head, frustrated.

_The past was never just the past._

_It still had teeth._

_They were dull and old, but still teeth, apparently._

"Milton, you don't-"

"Yes, I do," he broke in, eye-teeth grinding as the muscles in his jaw twitched under the layers of his scarf as he let the moment ride. Feeling the vibrations from the engine twitch through his soles like nervous laughter. "I think they're the type of people to look for. They were close-knit, loyal, a family. They'd been together, most of them, since the beginning. And they'd lost- lost people. They were still losing people, but they had a place. A prison. And my group, we- I thought I was on the right side. That I'd put my faith in the right person. But I was wrong. That's why I was out there. When I found out the truth – _when I let myself see it_ – I ran. We were heading to the prison when she- then I was got lost."

It was the first time he'd talked about anything that had come before.

It wasn't therapeutic.

_It was stale._

But he swallowed the aftertaste regardless. Choosing to focus on the quiet hitch of Paul's breathing and the warmth in his good eye as they watched each other from under the cover of their layers. Increasingly aware that it wasn't fear or grief thickening in his throat anymore. But rather something else entirely.

"There will be others, good people. I know it," Paul affirmed, clasping his shoulder gently. "There has to be. I refuse to believe that Negan and his group are the only ones around here that know how fight and use the guns they're hoarding."

He nodded. Knowing that was the appropriate response despite not really feeling it. He understood the words and the importance behind them, but the reality? He was too much of a realist to think this wouldn't end in bloodshed.

But his mind eventually stilled when the hand that'd been resting on his knee the whole drive back, made a sudden reappearance. Squeezing gently until he looked down then back up again. Meeting Paul's gaze without filter – without any of the usual masks he wore.

"The past shapes us, but it doesn't have to make us. I had a friend that said that to me once, before all this. She was a recovering alcoholic actually, almost killed someone drinking and driving one night during our first year of university. Stupid kid stuff. But she said the most important thing she learned was that we don't have become what we did. We can be better."

_We don't have to become what we did._

He turned the words over and over in as he eased the van back into drive.

Eventually nodding again and letting the silence do the rest.

The only difference was that this time the action was sincere.

_This time he believed it._

After all, he knew he was fighting for now.


	11. Chapter 11

"You haven't- I know you haven't."

Paul still had the vestiges of a black eye when he showed up outside his door after dinner a few days after they'd dragged themselves back home. Leaning against the frame with a six pack of beer and a shit-eating expression until he sighed - long suffering but secretly pleased - and let him in.

"You can't know that," he rasped back, unsteady and half-wrecked already. Doing disturbingly little to back his point as Paul smiled at him - sloe eyed and greedy. Running his hands through his hair and pushing it back as blunt nails scratched across his scalp in a pleasant frisson of sensation.

He discovered that Paul still had the imprint of another man's a fist across his ribs when he let himself get pinned up against the wall by his bed a couple hours after that. An active party to every moment as he ducked into the kiss - lunging and insistent. Hiking up Paul's shirt so he could map out unfamiliar ground with his hands.

"But I do," Paul insisted. Letting him get used to the upper hand and the unfamiliar rhythms that came when the body underneath you was hard and muscular instead of soft and giving before he pushed off the wall and pitched them down onto the mattress. Winning an undeclared war that seemed to involve who could get tangled in their shirt the fastest as the man all but ripped off his dark green shirt. Leaving him chilled and alone for a fraction of a beat before he joined him. Long hair tickling down his chest as he caught the man by the frayed ends and kissed him again.

_Because he could._

_Because he was allowed._

_Because Paul wanted-  
_  
Paul still had all the bruises and somehow that only made it better – _more_. Filling him with a nervous sort of excitement that made his lips and hands greedy. Helping him forget that this wasn't something he was used to. Pushing aside the past – the nerves, insecurity and caution – in favour of just letting it happen. Letting himself feel.

"You're beautiful," Paul murmured. Blunt teeth grazing down his throat as moist-warm hands tangled with the button of his jeans. Tugging them down with the deafening rasp of a straining zipper. "You know that right?"

He didn't know what that had to do with anything. But hell if it didn't make him _arch_ as Paul cupped him through the thin of damp cotton. Bringing him out slowly - like they could still stop at any time - as his cock twitched into the warm-damp of his hand. Hips bucking up when Paul indulged him with a long, lingering stroke from shaft to crown.

Oh.

_Oh-_

It had been a long time. Admittedly, it had been a long time _before_ everything had ended as well - at least by most people's standards. But then again he'd never been as hungry for it as the status quo. He'd always been selective - careful. But now? This felt different. More. Perhaps better than it'd ever been as his body and brain re-calibrated itself to meet the demands of a new factor. New dimensions. New protocols and expectations. Meanwhile, another part, a very human part, was cognizant that it'd been so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have another hand around his-

"It wasn't an eventually I had- I had ever really thought of," he admitted breathlessly. Hips trying desperately to rise as Paul kept him flat against the mattress. Nuzzling into his groin and biting gently at the inner of his thighs. Making the muscles jump and twitch just underneath the skin. "It was- it was never in my plan."

"Plan?" Paul echoed, amused. Licking a messy stripe up his shaft as the man's own hard-on dug insistently into his calf.

"How I believed my life would go," he panted, stubbornly trying to get it out. If only to show he wasn't as affected as he appeared. That he wasn't _that_ far gone despite already having a terrible feeling he was going embarrass them both by ending things far too early. "How-"

He broke off, fully aware he was being teased as Paul hummed into his skin. Fingers skating over the ridges of healing-pink scars and star-littered freckles and moles. Seeming to appreciate every inch.

"Not everything in life is planned," Paul countered, tapping pointedly on his thigh until he spread them a couple inches wider. Feeling exposed and over warm until Paul pressed himself between and hiked his legs up around his hips. Encouraging him to hold them there as he reached for his coat and took out a small silver tube.

"No," he agreed, swallowing thickly.

"Some of the best things are spontaneous," Paul added. Tone cheeky like he was smiling as he slicked his fingers in a series of quick, practiced motions. Barely giving him time to breathe before he leaned down and traced the thin line of his perineum. After which, any thought of keeping his eyes open quickly became a feat beyond all possibility.

"Yes."

The first brush of Paul's fingers against his hole made him feel unsteady. Like he was rapidly uncoiling. Rendering him momentarily incapable of deciding if he liked it or not- if he _wanted_ to continue until Paul's finger _curled_. Pressing against his entrance with a bit more in the way of pressure and- suddenly he was expelling air in an explosive rush. Body intimidated, startled, but somehow- still coy as he squirmed against the mattress.

_Oh._

_Well, that was certainly-_

" _Yes_ ," he repeated. Not realizing he'd already said it – or if it'd even been meant for that at all - as Paul chuckled above him. Squeezing more lube into his palm before leaning down, watching him closely as he moved restlessly. Wanting nothing more for that strange feeling to keep building.

The first finger was strange, even when it crooked. Making him frown and shift until Paul murmured _"greedy"_ into his skin in a fond way and added another. Scissoring out and hooking until his index finger brushed across his prostrate and everything went _white._

Embarrassingly, that was all it took.

For a long moment, overwhelming pleasure was all there was. Blanketing, blinding and absolutely catastrophic before Paul eased off. Humming nonsense into his hair and allowing the rest of the world to come rumbling back as the lingering haze of his orgasm departed in an unhappily familiar way.

Anxiety rippled through him as his cock leaked into empty air. Fighting the sensation of being vulnerable. That this was too much. Threatening to hollow him out and ruin everything as he struggled against it even as his body and brain demanded more. Like the intensity of the sensation had completely skipped his usual refractory period and was already ramping back up into hardness.

But it was overwhelming – _conflicting_.

It was changed etched in the extreme.

Irregular overstimulation.

Almost-

But then Paul was there. Eyes pupil-dark and understanding as he dropped over him. Weighing him down until all he could feel was him. Centering him with the familiar as his body jolted every time the man's fingers brushed across that small little gland inside him.

"Com'on," Paul coaxed, seeming to sense whatever it was he was feeling as he trailed open-mouthed kisses down the edge of his sweat-soaked hair. "I have you. Trust me, okay? I'm not going anywhere."

And yes- _yes_ \- he could do that.

_He would._

Because this was Paul.

And somehow, as impossible as it sounded, _Paul wanted to be his_.

* * *

"I lied," he said later. Looking up at the ceiling as his feet hung off the mattress – swinging idly as sweat cooled across his skin and the pleasant after-ache in his muscles slowly eased. "Earlier? When I first came here? You _did_ save me."

Paul shifted behind him, long hair threatening to tickle down the vulnerable span of his ribs for the two dozenth time as the man flashed gentle teeth in the dark. Smiling warmly before he rolled on top of him and kissed him easily. Turning it filthy like that kind of intimacy was easy for him, before he stopped over analysing and just let himself have it. Responding in kind as he gathered up the man's long hair and twisted it up into a makeshift knot on the top of his head. Holding itself in place precariously despite the dark brown tendrils that hung down. Framing Paul's face in a way that made his cock try and twitch from the exhausted cradle of his sticky thighs.

"Sounds like we're about equal then," Paul hummed, smile wide and genuine as he sank back down on top of him. Covering him over as his breathing hazed back to deep and he pressed a tired yawn into his skin.

' _No we aren't,'_ he thought silently. Letting his eyes drift closed as Paul's steady breathing eventually pulled him down too. Issuing out in shared rhythms and animal comforts as the peaceful nighttime sounds almost made him forget what was waiting for them outside the gates. The same ones he'd walked through all those months ago when he'd been too stubborn to admit that in everyway you could possibly save a person – from walkers, the world, even themselves - Paul had saved him.

_Not even close._

* * *

"Milton?"

It was months later when it happened. Months after that night outside the burning house and the ones they'd spent together ever since. Months where Paul's room gradually became theirs and he learned how to negotiate the give and take of that relationship. Understanding what it meant and how to navigate through that new level of intimacy. To have Paul in a way no one else was allowed to share. To learn him from the inside out and make him bleed sounds. Good sounds like breathy whines and honest pants. It was months into that new chapter when a familiar voice sounded out. Feminine and stripped red-raw with surprise as he emerged from the side door that led into the basement of the manor. Coming face to face with a near standoff.

_Michonne._

Short as their acquaintance had been, he would have known her voice anywhere.

Paul had been gone on a supply run for the past three days. He'd been two days overdue and now it seemed as though he was looking at the reason why. They'd argued about it before he left. He'd been in a critical stage with his experiment, attempting to prolong the shelf-life of the gasoline they had in storage, while Gregory wanted Paul out looking for basic supplies. Toothpaste and feminine hygiene products that were getting critically low.

He'd wanted him to wait. Just for a day or two, so he'd be able to join him. Arguing that the delay would make little different when one considered the benefit of having two people out there looking instead of one. But Paul had been antsy and Gregory had been worse. He'd allowed Paul to leave while he'd been too irritated to bother with goodbyes. Subsequently, he'd been on edge for days. Angry at himself more than anything as Gregory strutted around like the self-important rooster he was. Well assured in his place of power and authority as he made a point to visit his lab to gloat at least twice since Paul had left.

"What the hell is _he_ doing here?!"

He could see her taking him in. The others, some he recognized – Rick and Daryl - some he didn't, did the same. Noting the change. The bent glasses and light brown stubble. The casual clothes and overgrown hair. A far cry from- what was it the archer has called him? _The Butler?_

Paul shifted, coming to stand beside him in an unmistakable show of solidarity. Brushing elbows as he let the part of him that'd been tense all this time slowly relax. Not even so much as flicking an eyebrow when Daryl raised his crossbow. Lips down turned and angry.

He understood, but he didn't flinch. Not even when the air currents changed and he was looking down the stream-lined black of the arrow and the brightly colored flights that flared at the end. He hadn't been _that_ Milton Mamet in a long time and the way the man's face changed as the moment lengthened, told him it hadn't escaped notice.

"Lower your weapon," Paul ordered, quiet but firm as he wedged himself between them. One hand steady on his chest. Like he was making a show out of keeping them separate. But soft enough in spirit for him to know it was more for him than anything. Steady assurance. Positive weight. The kind of touch that whispered- _trust me, trust me- it's alright_. "Whatever your problem with Milton is, it's over. Effective immediately. That's nonnegotiable. He's one of us and he's saved this place more times than I can count. Myself included. If you have a problem with that, the deals off. Simple as that."

Rick and Maggie were behind Daryl, speaking quietly as the crossbow wavered.

But in a strange fit of _something-_ some emotion he wasn't sure could even be real, he found himself taking a step forward. Then another. And another. Until the point of the arrow was creating a violent dimple in the soft of his throat. Until he could feel the breathless shush of the crowd. The tension building. The soft whisper of Paul's hair brushing across his long sleeves. One hand already firm around his shoulder as Paul quietly hissed his name.

"Daryl," Rick murmured quietly. Stance loose-legged but unquestionably animal as his eyes darted around the growing circle of people trickling in from the manor and the housing trailers. Expressions fearful. Angry. Worried. Supportive. Quickly turning the tide in terms of sheer numbers alone as Gregory cleared his throat meaningfully from the wings.

He looked up then, chin mid-height and steady. Refusing to back down as the archer's eyes squinted themselves into slits. Ready to die. Ready to live. Ready to do anything other than lie to himself. To cower away and hide behind that white flag he'd used as camouflage all his life. Because the difference was that now he knew his worth. He'd earned it. He knew what he was capable of now. And most of all, he knew _himself_. Which is more than he could say for the person he'd been when they'd last met.

He'd grown up.

Grown hard.

_Just grown._

" _Back. Down_ ," Paul repeated. Voice empty of it's usual placating tones and now unapologetically iron-edged. Neither of them failing to notice the shift as Maggie stepped up. Talking to Rick quietly before hushing away again. Seemingly the deciding voice on the matter as Rick, Michonne and Daryl took a careful step back.

His molars ground together in silent agony as he forced his body to heel. Wanting to lash out. To beg for forgiveness. To burn and yell and tear. Running through the entire gamut of possible emotions but refusing to let even an inch show on his face as the crossbow slowly lowered and Andrea's ghost flickered into being behind the tense line of Michonne's shoulders. Smiling at him softly, in that bold little way she had, before disappearing between one blink and the next.

He didn't say a word when the moment was finally over. He didn't think he could. Uncertain of what to do with the bitter disappointment building inside his chest as Paul eased in front of him protectively. Turning the conversation to other matters as Michonne's eyes followed him.

But he couldn't handle it.

Not that weight.

Not those eyes.

So, instead of sticking around he turned on his heel and melted into the sidelines of the crowd. Carving a path for himself the same moment Ethan came charging into camp without his brother, mania burning in the back of his eyes.


	12. Chapter 12

That night there was a light knock on the door. Waking him so easily he was more or less aware that he'd never fully drifted off to sleep. He didn't question it. He simply felt his way across the nightstand, grabbing his knife and glasses as he eased himself out of the blankets without waking Paul. Wanting to get to the door before they had the opportunity to do the job properly as the man grunted and flopped over onto his side of the mattress.

He answered the door without thought, Chest bare and jeans only half buttoned up as Michonne took shape in the hallway gloom. More or less aware that Rick and Daryl were in the shadows behind her. He forced a blink, clearing the sleep from his eyes as he stalled for time. He probably should have expected this. Maybe he had. Maybe he just hadn't been conscious of it. Letting it burn slow in the back of his mind like a pot on perpetual boil.

He looked at her for a long moment before making a decision. Knowing from the look on her fact they weren't here for Paul, but for him. Just as much as he knew that this was something he had to do. Something that that had been building behind the scenes ever since he's heard Paul's voice filter in through the open window of his lab. He glanced back into the room as Paul slept on, restless in the sheets he just left. And for once, he was glad of it. This was something he had to do alone.

"Not here," he murmured softly. Ignoring the understanding that lilted softly in the back of her eyes as she caught a glimpse inside. Stepping back into the hall enough that it gave him room to lean back and snag a shirt before tossing it over his shoulder and easing the door closed behind him.

He slipped the shirt on without turning, using the moment to reorient himself as he focused on the elegant, hand carved mahogany of the door in front of him. Taking a moment to run his hand through his hair and slip on his glasses. Knowing they were taking in every line, every scar, the muscled thin of the flesh over his ribs that'd never gone back to its accustomed softness after all those months on his own. All of it was bare to their eyes. Their judgement. Every bit of him that was suddenly on display in a way that would have crippled him not that long ago. Back when he'd viewed privacy and solitude like currency he wanted to build, not spend.

He led the way through the darkened wings. Avoiding the creaking floorboards. The windows where the sentries would be facing. Anything that would give them away. Not sure if he could handle the addition of anymore ears, anymore faces, well meaning as they might be. He'd barely been left alone since what'd happened earlier - the others were on edge. Over protective.

It would have warmed him if the emotions hadn't been so misplaced. The man's whose throat he'd cut back at the burning house would likely beg to differ. He wasn't the one that needed protection anymore. But they did. The people here. Paul had been right, they needed people like Rick and his group, now more than ever. Especially if this Negan was stepping up his campaign. He wasn't blind to how it worked. The claim that they'd been short changed - whether true or false - was a gateway to taking advantage and he knew it. But this, Rick and his people, could be the edge they'd been looking for.

They settled in the cozy, brick-layered dark that had originally been part of the kitchens before the remodel. Puttering around quietly as he heated up some water and set out mugs for tea. Not bothering to ask if they wanted them. The night was cold and central heating was a pipe dream most of the time lately. You stayed warm however you could and you didn't say no to a hot drink. That was just how it worked.

He found himself unable to avoid the parallels to the first time as he slammed campfire-tin mugs of generic red rose, barely steaming onto the table without ceremony. Remembering that moment around the table with Andrea, Phillip and Michonne. When he'd had his tea press - perfectly steeped every time - and a cupboard full of expensive herbal teas he'd collected before the infection like they were some sort of awful indulgence.

He lifted his eyes with an exaggerated flick. Looking from the three of them to the mugs and then back again as they steamed pleasantly. Bare and blunt, but honest. It took another tense half-second for him to realize he was still standing. Forcing his knees to bend, one after the other as he sat down in the chair bordering Michonne and Rick. Well aware, even as he settled himself against the backrest that it was a tactical decision. Designed to make him feel small, crowded, cornered.

Less than ten months ago, it would have even worked.

He breathed unevenly until the moment broke and all three of them slowly reached for their mugs. Drawing them close to their chests as the warmth radiated from the beaten up metal.

The silence was an animal waiting for the right moment to strike. But still, he just sat there, searing his fingers against the side of his mug, allowing it to approach.

Eventually it was Michonne who broke the silence.

"What happened to you?" She asked, long hair hanging down over her shoulders, providing a contrast with the steam.

He warmed his hands around his mug as the corner of his lips twitched sardonically. Threatening to complete the expression before he forced it to heel.

"The same thing that happened to you, I would imagine," he remarked simply. The words placid and without weight despite the sharp looks he got in return.

He knew what they were thinking.

_We aren't the same._

You aren't like us.

And they were right, of course.

He wasn't like them anymore than he was like Paul - like anyone at the Hilltop. He was unique. He'd adapted late. Alone. Without anyone else to help him learn or have his back. He'd taught himself. There had been no other option. He'd found his own niche in this world and used it to his full potential. He'd survived. Others like him - better than him - hadn't. And that was something he had to live with. Something they all had to live with.

But he also knew what they weren't saying.

What they were fishing for.

"You survived out there, on your own?" Rick stated, less a question than it was an accusation. Calloused palms clenching slightly around the dented-smooth of his mug.

The archer took it a step further with a diverse sound. Kicking at the table so that the tea in his mug was in danger of slopping over the sides as he crossed his arms over the back of his chair. Closed off and clearly suspicious.

"Last time we saw you, you could barely handle a paper cut," Daryl snorted.

A mirror image of himself, ten months old and painfully out of place slanted into view on the other side of the room. Watching him with a bland, deminitive expression - pencil and notebook in hand as he faced who he was - who he'd been - unflinchingly. Biting down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted tapped iron when Phillip - no, the Governor - took shape behind the image of his old self. Expression looming, dark and wicked. Standing out like a metaphors- something obvious and targeted as his old self remained completely unaware of his presence behind him.

Not when the barrel of a gun gleamed. Not even when the safety clicked back and the governor grinned like a snarl. Peppering his skin with red as the old Milton crumpled to the floor without a sound. Clutching as the fractured hole where his heart had been.

He shook his head, the motion so slight he was able to pass it off by leaning forward and picking up his mug. A lot had changed since then.

"Things change," he echoed, forcing his eyes away from the ghosts - hallucinations - whatever they were as he took a careful sip from his mug. "People do. I didn't think I could. But I did. I had to."

"How long?" Michonne asked.

"I lost track," he admitted. Remembering his notebooks and the solace he'd found in them in those first few months. Finding a hopeless sort of purpose in scribbling everything down. Everything that'd happened. Everything that was happening. "From my records and what Paul told me later, it was at least five or six months. I avoided the cities - towns. I didn't trust."

"How did you find this place?" Rick asked, expression evolving slowly as his mug curled steam into the chilly air.

"I didn't," he answered, smiling small. "Paul found me. Twice actually. He wouldn't let me go. I didn't want to admit it for a long time, but he saved my life. Bringing me here."

"Ain't what he says," Daryl grunted, fingers spraying out like a muted snap before edging back to the warmth of his mug. "'Cording to him you up and saved him.  
Salted the earth and all that."

"Negan and his men aren't the only threat we've faced here. Your group does not get the sole distinction of being a target for calamities," he pointed out, slightly prim. Pushing back the sensory memories that jostled to drag him back down into the events of that night. "Besides, one could consider it as returning the favor."

"He says his friends call him that. Jesus. You don't," Michonne broke in, ushering the room to quiet.

"He isn't my friend," he answered simply, refusing to make a face when he scalded his tongue on the next sip. Temporarily forgetting about ambient temperature when the weight of the eyes finally started to wear on him.

"No," she murmured thoughtfully, gaze appearing to soften a fraction. "He isn't. Is he?"

He didn't know how to reply to that, so he didn't. Uncertain of what the silence was saying for him but content to let it all the same.

Paul was used to his silence. To the moments where words weren't needed but he found himself responding all the same as the man's lips grazed a path down his skin. A mess of grazing stubble and tickling how hair until his fist catch itself in the thick of it. Keeping the both of them grounded as his hips jerked up and up and Paul's swallowed around him, groaning.

"What happened, after Woodsbury?" Rick asked after a long moment. The break in the silence dangerously close to a mercy kill as he cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. Finding himself almost grateful for the distraction despite the subject matter.

"After the meeting things...devolved." he allowed, considering his words before he voiced them. "The truth is he used us and we let him. All of us. We were deliberately blind until it was too late. And for good reason. What he became? It wasn't what he was. I'm not making excuses for him. But he was my friend - the only one i really had to be honest. I was in the room when his wife died - head on Collison before all this - I looked after Penny, his daughter while he figured out the funeral arrangements. By the time he was ready to take her back, the first reports from the CDC were just coming out. After that it was like looking at a stranger."

He remembered the genial smile that had never quite seemed right whenever he asked about something in private that the Governor hadn't chosen to say aloud on own of their council meetings. He remembered the quiet way things were dealt with behind the scenes and how it was Merle that always seemed to be the one the Governor was talking to in the back alleys.

"What he was doing? What he was really doing? Andrea made me see it. After that everything happened fast. When I confronted him, I couldn't reach him. So I did what I had to. I did what I could. I tried to buy some time. I set fire to the pits and told Andrea to go. I couldn't leave- not yet. She said she was going to bring back home- get the others back. And I believed her."

Across the table the groups expression darkened. Shifting almost restlessly as Michonne stared at him unblinking.

"She tried to get back to you, but he went after her, captured her and brought her back. He had me by that point. Tortured both of us before he finally brought me in to where he had her. Told me to kill her. A so called test of loyalty," he shared with a light smirk. Knowing now, just as he had then, that it had been so such thing. He had been dead either way."

His knees twinged like a sympathetic echo as he remembered falling across the concrete on his hands and knees. Glasses missing and blood dripping down his face as Andrea look down at him in horror. Mouth moving with the syallables of his face was the governor wrenchedhim upright. The change in gravity disturbing as he swallowed thickly stomach trying it's best to turn inside out as the taller man shoved him deeper into the room. Taunting him with the verberating echos.

"I don't know how but I got him. I grazed him with the knife he gave me to do it with and he fell backwards. Long enough for us to get out. We ran- we just-"

He broke off, unsteady. Knowing he was giving something of it away as his hand curled into a brutal fist of top of the table.

"We were headed to the prison when we got surprised by a herd."

He already hated himself for not saying it. How it was his fault. How Andrea died because of him. He'd lived and she'd died because she made a choice she couldnt have possbily he hadn't even been able to give her an out as they'd torn into her. She'd felt it. Every bite. Every tear and fountain of blood that had gushed up while he'd slumped unconscious at the bottom of that gulley ravine. Safe and whole.

She'd felt every second of it.

But Rick just nodded. Like he'd given them something precious anyway. Elbows on the table, a mess of long-limbed grace and lethality.

"We can all change. Some of us don't get the chance. You did, and you did something with it."

It took him a moment to realize it was a compliment. But that just made it worse. Realizing that now more than ever he needed to-

Andrea's ghost flickered into being across from him. Hands planted across the old grain wood as she leaned over the table. Blue sleeves rolled up, and blond hair loose. Looking at the others with a soft, heartwrenching smile before foxing him with that look she had. The one that reminds you that-

He took a deep breath. Flattening his palms on the table as he looked at each of them in turn before he spoke.

"There's something you need to know. About- about Andrea."

* * *

Michonne came to him before they left the following morning. Joining him on the wall as he took his turn on watch.

A deal had been made. Terms met. And now they were leaving with half their food stores upfront. It wasn't a deal he would have made. It was risky and foolish - even as far as Gregory was concerned. Half sure Negan's little scheme, along with his wounds, had rattled him up more than a bit considering the man was usually more stingy with their food stores than he was ever the opposite.

"She would have been proud, you know that don't you?" Michonne murmered. Feeling the warm weight of her beside him - not touching but close enough that he swore he could tell the difference in the air - as they stood together. "She would have been happy you made it. Made it here. I know she would have."

He watched the distant trail of smoke from a far off fire a long time before he answered. Playing a game with himself as he tried to pinpoint the location through terrain alone.

"You were right to leave," he said after a moment. Realizing that in the same way she had that his words were not meant to wound. "It might not have felt like it after everything- but it was."

It was her turn to be quiet then, taking in the growing dusk as her katana rustled against the leather holster between her shoulder blades.

"We both got a second a chance, in different ways," she countered. "That's what it means to survive. To learn how to deal with it. And what to do with it. Andrea would have agreed with yours."

He sat out there for a long time after she left. Until the sun gradually set and Paul was beside him and lacing their fingers together. Content to say nothing as the stars slowly edged their way out of an inky black sky and made a mockery of ancient nightmares.

* * *

He wasn't consciously aware of the moment when he wrote Paul down on paper.

But in hindsight, whenever that was, that was the moment he wanted him to live forever.

_To endure._

To be remembered long after they were both gone by someone else – someone curious and perhaps with the ability to make difference – to read through his notes, his journals and discoveries – and to internalize the shades of people they'd once been. And for him, as they moved together, sweat-warm and tripping over the words neither of them could bring themselves to say out loud - tangled inside each other's skin - there was no better sign of intention than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Reference: 
> 
> \- The title, "scintilla" is a rare word meaning: "a minute particle; spark; or trace.”


End file.
